War in Ukraine

Plans to dramatically cut welfare benefits for refugees from Ukraine who flee to Ireland to avoid Russia’s war are causing anxiety, according to a priest who works with the new arrivals. Officials in Dublin say that they want to “slow” the number of people arriving from Ukraine.

A Catholic church in Ukraine named for St. Nicholas marked its patron’s feast day by enshrining relics from St. John Paul II, who witnessed the power of faith over authoritarianism.

Russian occupation authorities have banned the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and other Catholic ministries in occupied areas of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, according to the church’s main communications office in Kyiv.

As the world celebrated International Volunteer Day Dec. 5, Grazyna Slawinska, a young Polish volunteer who left her comfortable job to aid people with disabilities in Ukraine, was in eastern Ukraine to spend another December in the war-torn nation.

Ukrainian church leaders have joined anniversary commemorations of the 1932-1933 Holodomor, or Great Famine, in which millions died in a disaster deliberately engineered by Soviet Union rulers.