Archbishop William E. Lori joined a small group of leaders from the Knights of Columbus on a four-day trip to Poland and Ukraine to help distribute aid from the fraternal organization to orphanages and other service centers assisting refugees from the war in Ukraine.
Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly established the Ukraine Solidarity Fund in February to assist with food, shelter, clothing and other supplies. During this trip, the Knights brought care packages for internally displaced persons and also provided monetary support for the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the Latin-rite Church in Ukraine and for the orphanage run by the Archdiocese of Częstochowa, Poland.
In a video interview Oct. 2 from Lviv, Ukraine, where he had completed a day of gatherings with Archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki, the city’s Latin-rite bishop and president of the country’s Latin-rite bishops’ conference, among others, Archbishop Lori said he sees a lot of resilience in the Ukrainian people.
“The Ukrainians are a very sturdy people, a courageous people. What I’m seeing is beautiful hope,” he said.
As an illustration, he noted that the choir at Sunday Mass at St. John Paul II Parish in Lviv was made up of children who are refugees “and they sang like angels.” Among them were one who played piano and two who played violin.
“These are all children whose homes, as far as I know, are gone. But they were there, and they were joyful. They were singing,” said the archbishop, Supreme Chaplain of the Knights of Columbus.
The choir director was also communicating hope and joy to the young people in the choir, who were reflecting it back to her, Archbishop Lori said.
He said he also saw resilience in the workers taking care of the displaced persons.
He walked around the main square with Archbishop Mokrzycki.
“You see it (resilience) in the people, in the general populace. … And there are people – war or no war – they’re out there, their families are out there, lots of young people are out there and they are doing their very best to carry on as if there is no war. I think there’s great resiliency here in Ukraine,” Archbishop Lori said.
On the second day of the trip, the group stopped at an orphanage near Częstochowa, Poland, near the famed shrine that houses an icon of the Blessed Mother holding the child Jesus. At the parish of St. Wojciech there, the archbishop helped distribute warm coats as part of the Knights’ Coats for Kids campaign. He also gave out little treats during lunchtime.
“What’s interesting is that a lot of these children were from families that already were in difficult situations,” Archbishop Lori said. “Some of them were families that were broken up, some of them did not have any kind of stability before the war.
“But once the war broke out, their situation just got worse. Many of them have no one in the world to look after them; their families have been dispersed or whatever. And so, Caritas (the Catholic charity) of Krakow has taken them in.”
The Knights’ delegation also expected to tour a KofC warehouse Oct. 3, which would include not only the necessities of life but also, for example, books for soldiers to read in the lulls between battles and military action.
At the warehouse, “I expect to see hard-working, generous, loving Knights living out the first principle of the order, which is charity. I expect to see people who are the recipients of their kindness and have an opportunity to meet them,” he said.
“I’ve been uniformly impressed by what I’ve seen the Knights doing here, both in Poland and in Ukraine.”
Knights councils were first established in Poland in 2006 and Ukraine in 2012. There are now more than 7,000 Knights in 164 councils in Poland, and nearly 2,000 Knights in 44 councils in Ukraine.
Archbishop Lori said the spirit of generosity is the same in both places. “In fact, there’s a remarkable bond of cooperation between the Knights in Poland and the Knights in Ukraine,” noting that it is good to see the close communication and working together, as they respond toneeds and help each other grow in their respective countries.
“The big difference, of course, is that in Ukraine you’re in the country where the war is taking place, and even though Lviv has not been shelled for months, nonetheless, you’re in the country where the war is actually going on,” he said.
“I would say the other difference is that the people I met this morning were, in a very direct way, victims of the war because they lived in cities that have been heavily damaged by the hostilities by the shelling and many of them have come here to Lviv really without any other place to go.”
Lviv has been less affected than other sites in Ukraine, he said, but it is not out of harm’s way.
“There was shelling going on earlier in the war, and they’re not immune from shelling now, and, of course, the aggressors will not stop at military targets,” the archbishop said of the Russians who invaded Ukraine in February. “They’re perfectly willing to do civilian targets as well, and so while in many ways it looks like life is returned to normal, there are signs it’s not normal.”
Among those signs, he cited tighter border security between Poland and Ukraine, checkpoints and fortifications for buildings that house precious artifacts.
Archbishop Lori said the Ukraine Solidarity Fund and the efforts in Poland and Ukraine to assist those affected by the war represent “an unbroken chain of charity.” Knights, especially in the United States and Canada, raised a significant amount of money. This has been added to by Knights in Poland and Ukraine, who are also the points of distribution for the generosity.
As of Oct. 3, the Ukraine Solidarity Fund had raised more than $19 million from more than 56,000 donors, including a $1.5 million pledge from the Knights’ Supreme Council. According to Steven Curtis, vice president, corporate communications for the KofC, 100 percent of donations are used to assist those directly affected by the conflict in Ukraine.
According to Szymon Czyszek, director of International Growth in Europe for the Knights of Columbus, more than 40,000 care packages and more than 1.2 million pounds of supplies including food, medicine and clothing have been distributed so far as a result of the Ukraine Solidarity Fund.
The Knights have assisted more than 300,000 people at Knights of Columbus Mercy Centers, the first of which was established in Hrebenne, Poland; a second center opened in mid-March in Budomierz.
“During the first weeks of the war, the centers provided much-needed opportunities for refugees to find shelter, warmth, rest, food and water – as well as spiritual support through the presence of KofC chaplains and the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy,” Czyszek said.
Archbishop Lori said he als ohas been impressed by the leadership of Archbishop Mokrzycki, who had been deputy secretary to Pope John Paul II in his later years.
“You can see the great and magnanimous spirit of Pope St. John Paul II in Archbishop Mokrzycki,” who is chaplain of the Latin rite Knights of Columbus in Ukraine.
“He is, like John Paul II, a very strong leader, understands his people, knows his people, loves his people and has been a very courageous leader in time of war,” Archbishop Lori said.
The archbishop had also met with Archbishop Mykhaylo Bubniy, C.Ss.R., exarch of Odessa, who is chaplain for the Ukrainian Greek Knights in Ukraine. He also planned to meet with the Greek Catholic Patriarch Sviatoslav Shevchuk, who was coming from Kyiv to Lviv.
“It’s a beautiful thing to see the Latin rite and the and the Greek Catholic rite Knights working together as one, united in charity and in service,” Archbishop Lori said.
And that won’t end anytime soon, since Kelly, the Supreme Knight, has pledged that the Knights would continue to assist Ukraine for as long as it takes, the archbishop said.
Jenny Kraska, executive director of the Maryland Catholic Conference, also accompanied the group. Kraska visited Ukraine in summer 2021 after she had set up a nonprofit to assist monastic communities in the country and returned in July 2022. The Benedictine convents she visited before the war began had been designated as refugee centers after the war began.
Email Christopher Gunty at editor@CatholicReview.org
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