‘Don’t leave us alone’

A U.S. delegation of the Knights of Columbus led by Archbishop of Baltimore William E. Lori made a solidarity visit to Ukraine in October, reaching Kyiv, Bucha and Lviv by train. The reality of suffering that presented itself before their eyes is dramatic, just as profound is the resilience shown by the Ukrainian people, who still deserve attention and support.

The first stop was Kyiv, where the delegation-members of the Catholic organization – founded in 1881 in New Haven, Connecticut, in the United States – attended a Mass at St. Alexander Cathedral, concelebrated by Bishops Vitalii Kryvytskyi, Mykhaylo Bubniy, and the apostolic nuncio to Ukraine Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas.

For Ukrainians today, churches have become more than just a place of prayer; they are shrines. War has broken into the daily lives of all Ukrainians, many of whom have suffered casualties among family members and loved ones. In the church, faces marked by deep sadness but not also by despair: the testimony of a people who continue to cherish hope.

The experience that the delegation felt emotionally hardest was the visit to Bucha. Just outside the city, beside a destroyed bridge, piles of burned-out car wreckage and the skeletons of half-destroyed buildings stand as evidence of an attempt to escape the city, which for many, however, ended in tragedy. Staring in silence at these ruins, a symbol of a city that has been pervaded by horror, it seemed as if it was the earth itself emitting a lament. Nearby is a place where eight men were tortured and killed, whose children, met by the delegation, retain, in their young minds, not memories but a legacy of pain.

In the imminence of a cold winter, the Knights of Columbus distributed coats to the locals, and small gifts to these children, which they received as an appreciation of the resilience that even the children here show. An attitude that expresses the widespread determination of this people to honor the victims but also to rebuild a future after the immense losses suffered.

In Bucha, a Mass was celebrated at St. Andrew the Apostle Church, where a memorial was made for the city’s civilian victims. Similar memorials were also made in many other cities. But more than through monuments, the narrative of the atrocities of the war comes through the narrative of the living. As for example in Kyiv, where Archbishop Lori spoke with a group of widows who told him, along with their grief, of the difficulties they face in getting by without the support of their husbands. When the archbishop asked them what they needed most, the constant response was, “Remember us. Tell our stories.” Not just shelter, food, and medicine. But words, testimonies.

In Lviv, the delegation delivered a new ambulance and visited new modular housing units delivered to the many who lost their homes in the bombings. And Archbishop Lori held a meeting with some 60 Knights of Columbus member priests from across the country who continue to carry out their chaplaincy duties. What emerged from their words was the indomitable will of Ukrainians not to give in to circumstances, to resist and begin again to rebuild what was destroyed, thanks in part to the vital support of the Knights’ organization and Caritas Ukraine. From them, too, one pressing request: that the Ukrainian one – today and when the war is over – does not become another forgotten humanitarian crisis: “Do not forget us, do not leave us alone.”

Reprinted from L’Osservatore Romano. 

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