Archbishop Shevchuk: 'Don't forget Ukraine!'

By Svytlana Dukhovych

“We prayerfully ask the Lord for peace for our people, that this war ends as soon as possible; we ask Him to protect us from suffering and death. But we must be aware that He is ready to give us more than we ask. This gives us hope.”

In a wide-ranging interview with Vatican media the Archbishop Major of Kyiv-Halych Sviatoslav Shevchuk describes the longing for peace of the Ukrainian people as the country marks the second anniversary of the full-scale war waged by Russia against the country on 24 February, 2022. This aspiration, he says, is accompanied every day by prayers, as every day “is accompanied by the sound of sirens and explosions” that have devastated the country in the past two years.

Q. For two years now, many people in Ukraine wake up almost daily to the sound of sirens and explosions. Others read the news with concern. The thoughts of many go to their loved ones who are at the front or in very dangerous places. What are your first thoughts and prayers when you wake up?

Archbishop Shevchuk My first prayer in the morning when I wake up is a prayer of thanksgiving, because when you wake up alive you already have a good reason to thank the Lord, to thank Him for the gift of a new day, the gift of life that you must transform into the gift of yourself to God, to your Church, to your people.

Lately, I have found the sense of this prayer of thanksgiving in these words of the Prophet Isaiah: ‘Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer; you shall cry, and he will say, 'Here I am. ' (cf. Is 58:9).’

It truly strikes me. and gives meaning to the other prayers because it is a word of hope: it says that the Lord is more ready to give than we are to ask. Obviously, we ask the Lord for peace for our people, we ask that this war ends as soon as possible, we ask the Lord to protect us from suffering, from death. But before beginning this prayer with our requests, it is important to be aware that the Lord is more ready to give than we are to ask. This gives us hope.

Q. War brings death, suffering, produces hatred and creates serious social problems. How does the Church seek to address all this?

Archbishop Shevchuk I must say that in these two years of full-scale invasion – but in fact  the war has been going on for ten years – our Church has developed a particular type of pastoral care that I call a ‘pastoral care of mourning’ because we must accompany the people who cry, who suffer, who grieve the loss  their loved ones, their home, their world.

It is a challenge because it is very easy to be pastors of happy people.  Perhaps today Western culture needs what we would call a 'pastoral care of pleasure', or  'pastoral care of comfort', that is a pastoral care for the consumerist world. The Holy Father often says that this pastoral care means warning the modern man against this culture of waste that seeks ever more intense pleasure with less responsibility. But in the context of war, we are faced with a completely different challenge: we live the tragedy of the destruction of our country, of our cities every day, every day we face death, and unfortunately, we still don’t know when all this is going to end. Therefore, we are faced with a situation of deep suffering of our people and we often we feel powerless.

What can we do? Sometimes priority is given to being present rather than doing something: being there with the people who cry trying to show that the Lord is with us. Finding appropriate words for a mother who is mourning the death of her son, finding words  to say to young person who has lost his legs and does not know how to live, or a child who has seen his mother's death. What can you say to this poor child who doesn’t know how to relate with other people but also with himself?

This pastoral care of mourning is a challenge, but it is also a pastoral care of hope, because we see that the Christian faith calls us to bring the hope of Resurrection in the midst of people grieving their losses. This is our life, the life of the Church, and how we proclaim the Gospel in this great tragedy of the war in Ukraine.

Q. I also wanted to ask where do you find the strength - you personally, the priests, the consecrated people - to accompany the people in this dark period?

Archbishop Shevchuk I must confess sincerely that it is a mystery. We don’t really  know. Only when you look back at the past two years war you can  understand where you have  found your strength .

Perhaps it is the same presence of God that Moses experienced in the Sinai when the Lord said to him: “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (cf. Ex 33:20). We can recognize this presence that inspires us, that rekindles our strength only by looking at the back of the Lord who passes by, who has passed through your pain.

I must say that there are specific moments when we  feel bucked up: that is prayer and the Sacraments of the Church. Today we can reaffirm  what Christians said in the  early centuries: 'Sine dominico non possumus', that is, without the celebration of the Eucharist, we cannot live or work.

Then there is also frequent confession: there is a great rediscovery of the Sacrament of Reconciliation that heals our spiritual wounds, but also those of the human psyche. Because we live in constant danger of dying at any moment. For example, I don’t know whether I will still be alive in an hours’ time: this is our reality. Therefore, we must always be ready to die and to present ourselves before the Lord.

Then there is also a third moment in our activity: obviously, after every bombing, after every missile attack, we perceive fear, we suffer new psychological trauma, but it is important to transform this energy of fear into action. Many people have said that after every missile attack they notice an increase in their activity. This energy that bursts inside you when you hear the roar of explosions and the shaking of your home must be transformed into actions of solidarity, of service: doing good helps you heal, transforming your pain into solidarity with those who cry, transforming your grieving into Christian charity. This transformation from 'being' to 'acting', but in a positive, and constructive way, is something that gives us hope. Perhaps these three realities can be seen  as the secret of our resilience, the secret of the Christian hope of the Ukrainian people today.

Q. So, the Ukrainian people continue to hope even though they have every reason to despair?

Archbishop Shevchuk I must say that we are wounded, but not desperate. As Saint Paul says, we are treated with contempt, but not destroyed (cf. 2 Cor 4:9). Every day we experience the death of our Lord Jesus Christ in our flesh to live His Resurrection. The people who believe in the Eternal Life, the people who believe in the Risen Christ, find hope. And I must say that hope is not an empty feeling, blindly trusting in what you do not know. No, this is not Christian hope. The sense of Christian hope is the life of the Risen One: we will certainly rise again. We already carry this hope in our life today, but it will be fully revealed only in the future life.

Therefore, Christian hope is a virtue that involves the will, your way of thinking, your reason, and your feelings.  In Ukraine, we often hear the Latin phrase "Contra spem spero" (I hope against all hope), which has also become the title of a poem by the famous Ukrainian poet Lesja Ukrainka (1871-1913): we have a Christian hope against human despair. Therefore, the Christian eye can see in these conditions a light of faith that perhaps non-believers cannot perceive.

Q. During its meeting early in February the Synod of the Greek-Catholic bishops in Ukraine focused the pastoral care of the family. What are the main challenges in this area and what are you trying to do as a Church?

Archbishop Shevchuk. Today, the pastoral plan of our Church, which we have agreed upon at the Synodal level, can be summarized in the perspective of healing the wounds of the people.

One of the priorities of this pastoral care is the pastoral care of families experiencing grieving. It is important to understand how to accompany the family, and we have conducted an in-depth analysis of the situation of Ukrainian family life. First of all, we understood that the majority of Ukrainian families, unfortunately, live in a situation of forced separation. Most men are fighting today. This means that these families live without the daily presence of a father.

Then we have massive emigration: it is estimated that 14 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their homes. The vast majority moved within the country, especially from the eastern regions to the central and western parts.

Then, nearly 6 million people have left Ukraine. Some have returned, others have continued to stay in other countries.

This means that these families are separated because men cannot leave Ukraine. The vast majority, 80%, of Ukrainian war refugees in Europe are young women with their children. It is the great tragedy of separation.

Official statistics say that in 2023, more than 170,000 marriages were registered in Ukraine, the lowest number in the history of Ukraine since its  independence. In the past there were up to 600,000 new marriages a year.

But there other data  that really concerned  us was that in addition to low number of  marriages, there were also 120,000 divorces. In the face of the current difficuklt situation, the Ukrainian State now proposes marriage registrations in one day, meaning that people can apply online and their civil union will be registered with the government in one day.

On one hand, this seems to facilitate the registration of civil marriage, but on the other hand, it trivializes the very concept of family. If marriage can be registered in one day, it means that the next day you can get divorced, and something important is taken lightly, without deep involvement and responsibility.

There is also another situation that makes us reflect. Before the war, the major challenges were represented by two types of families: dysfunctional families, that is, those experiencing a crisis, on the verge of divorce, and which the Church had to accompany to strengthen their family bond, and the families of migrants, when the mother, the woman, went to seek work in Italy, Greece, and other European countries, and the husband remained at home with the children.

Bringing the mother back to the family, that is how to reintegrate these people into Ukrainian society, into their own family, is a real challenge.

But now we have four new challenges for family pastoral care. First of all, we have families who have lost a relative, young families:  for example, a young wife who has lost her husband and doesn't know how to explain to her children when their father will come back. These young widows in Ukraine today are called "black tulips". It is truly a tragedy and we must accompany these families.

The other tragedy is that of the families of those who have been seriously injured in war. According to official statistics, in Ukraine today, we have 200,000 people, former soldiers and civilians, who have been seriously injured. And the family bears the full weight of caring for and providing social and medical assistance to the injured. Often these families are abandoned by the State, which cannot offer adequate social assistance. These seriously injured people who need specific medical care often don't even have enough food. It is estimated that among these 200,000 injured, 50,000 have lost their legs or arms, especially young people, and they need rehabilitation and specific care. Accompanying these people means not only healing the body: they need psychological counseling, but this does not work without spiritual accompaniment.

And how can you offer spiritual accompaniment to a 23-year-old woman who has lost her arms? It is truly a great challenge.

Then we have other families who have received the news that a relative of theirs is missing on the front and there is no news of him. Officially, 35,000 people are registered as missing. You can’t imagine the hell the mother and father who have no news of their son or the wife who lives with no news of her husband are going through! Imagine a 25-year-old woman with two children who says, ‘I don't know how to pray because I don't know if my husband is alive or dead. Am I a widow or not? How can I organize my life?’. This becomes torture because the child asks every day, every morning, ‘When is dad coming back?’. And that woman doesn't know what to answer, she doesn't know how to tell her child whether his father is alive or dead.

Every time a new prisoner exchange is announced and when the people who were previously registered as missing appear, these hopes are revived, but pain, disappointment, and profound suffering are also revived.

Then we have another category, which is the families of prisoners of war, and accompanying them is a very difficult challenge. I must say that in every parish I visit, they present me with endless lists of relatives who are prisoners of war.

I relentlessly collect these names, I look at these faces of young people, and I transmit them to the Holy Father. From time to time, I write a letter with a new list of prisoners of war. I am deeply grateful to the Holy Father for his commitment to the release of prisoners of war. We know the where-abouts of some, of others we don't. We pray that one day they may be released and return home.

This is the picture of the suffering of Ukrainian families today, this is how war has struck at the heart of Ukrainian society, namely the family.

Another dimension of Ukrainian society's life is children. We are witnessing a dramatic decline in births in Ukraine. According to state statistics, in 2023, 210,000 children were born in Ukraine. For the year 2024, only 180,000 births are expected. This is one third of what normally happened in Ukraine before.

Officially, the Ukrainian government claims that 527 children have been killed and 1,224 injured to varying degrees of severity.

Needless to say, a great crime against the dignity of the child are the deportations by the Russian government of Ukrainian children from the occupied areas to Russia, thus separating them from their parents. Ukrainian authorities claim to have identified and verified information about nearly 20,000 children who were deported to Russia during the full-scale war.

The total number of children who, according to Russian sources, have been taken, by various means, from the occupied territories to Russia is of about 700,000. The Ukrainian government states that as of January 24, 2024, 388 children have been returned to Ukraine, which is a relatively small number. We are grateful that the International Court is studying this phenomenon, and is already defining all this as a crime against humanity.

But we must pray for these children because they are among the weakest and most vulnerable, and during war, those who suffer the most, who receive the most devastating injuries. This phenomenon of war children in Ukraine is another humanitarian disaster that we, as a Church, must address today. We must give voice to these voiceless children, help parents find their children, and also accompany them.

I have met some children who were deported by the Russians and then, through various international mechanisms, including the mission of Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, were returned to their families. These children really need specific care, they deserve great attention, very particular pastoral accompaniment because in their young age they have experienced unimaginable human cruelty and some of them have been sexually abused. This is a cry of pain from Ukraine that the whole world must be aware of and listen to.

Q. What is your message to Catholics worldwide two years after the start of the full-scale invasion?

Archbishop Shevchuk We are doing everything to end this senseless war! We must seek all means to restrain the aggressor because war always brings death, tragedy, and the destruction of human life and entire societies. I would like our brothers and sisters in Europe and around the world to understand that the war in Ukraine is not just a "Ukrainian war," meaning it's not simply a phenomenon that can be confined within the borders of our suffering country: it is a reality that is invading the world, like a volcano erupting in Ukrainian territory, but its smoke and lava extend beyond. This war will eventually affect everyone, not just the soldier on the front lines and their family, but also everyone who lives near or far from the borders of Ukraine, European society, and even the global society. Therefore, we ask for solidarity. Do not forget us because if we are forgotten and abandoned, this earthquake that we are experiencing in Ukraine today will shake the entire world. We have hope that true solidarity saves lives; solidarity can help us find solutions that perhaps we have not yet identified today. Do not forget Ukraine; do not abandon us in our mourning and pain.