Peace in Ukraine demands ‘everyone’s contribution’, says Parolin

Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk thanked ‘all people of good will who support us, pray for us, send humanitarian convoys and help us Christians carry out social service in our homeland’.

The Vatican’s secretary of state called for renewed international commitment to peace in Ukraine.

“Everyone’s contribution is truly needed to take a few steps towards peace,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, during an event at the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital.

He told reporters that it was unclear what those steps should be: “If we knew, we would have taken them already.”

Besides the efforts of the United States, he said that European powers should “take on a more prominent role” while China also “has something to say” in peace negotiations.

Cardinal Parolin described his meeting at the Vatican on Monday with Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán – who opposes the European Union’s support for Ukraine – as “a good encounter” where “each side was able to express its own point of view”.

Orbán also met Pope Leo and the Secretary for Relations with States Archbishop Paul Gallagher.

The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk appealed for unified international opposition to the Russian invasion in his weekly message on 26 October.

He thanked “all people of good will from different countries and nations who support us, pray for us, send humanitarian convoys to Ukraine, and help us Christians carry out social service in our homeland”.

Shevchuk said that during a visit to Norway with a delegation from the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations the previous week, he had heard the King and Queen of Norway recall their experience of Nazi occupation during the Second World War. They wished Ukraine “the joy of liberation, the joy of victory”, he said.

In an address to the Norwegian royals during the visit, Shevchuk said Russia planned to “resolve the Ukrainian question, just as Nazi Germany sought to finalise the Jewish one”.

“The very fact that we are here before you today is a miracle,” he said. “We were all on Russian execution lists. Russian troops stopped a few kilometres from our churches and homes in Kyiv. If Ukraine had been occupied, we would no longer be here – we would not be sitting in front of you now, but would be in torture chambers.”

Speaking during the delegation’s visit to the Norwegian parliament, Shevchuk emphasised the importance of protecting children who have suffered the most from the war. 

“According to official statistics, 250,000 children in Ukraine can neither read nor write, and almost a quarter of students have never been to school,” he said.

Thanking Norway for its support, he asked for renewed efforts to rescue Ukrainian children illegally deported from the occupied territories by the Russians.

“Today, a website has been launched in Luhansk where children are reportedly being sold,” he said. “Russia officially claims to have ‘rescued’ 600,000 Ukrainian children. Their parents then spend their whole lives searching for their children.”

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