As Russia’s war on Ukraine approaches its 11th year, thousands of Ukrainians from all over the world gathered at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France to pray for peace in their homeland and throughout the world.
The annual All-Ukrainian Prayer took place at the Marian shrine Oct. 11 to 13, according to the Kyiv-based press office of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which interviewed several pilgrims on a first-name-only basis.
Pilgrims traveled to Lourdes from Ukraine as well as from the Western countries to which at least 6.2 million Ukrainians have fled following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, which continued attacks launched in 2014.
Russia’s aggression, which has also resulted in the forced deportation of well over 19,500 Ukrainian children to Russia and Belarus, has been declared a genocide in two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights.
Among those praying for peace at the Lourdes shrine were Andriy and Iryna, a couple who fled to Germany from their home in the now-destroyed eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut, where some of the war’s fiercest clashes have been waged.
“We pray for Ukraine, our state, soldiers, suffering people,” the couple told the UGCC press office. “We are looking for a connection with God and the Ukrainian people, because first of all we are Ukrainians. “
Fellow pilgrims Oksana and Natalia, who have also taken refuge in Germany, said they had come to Lourdes to “know God and go to Jesus to grow in faith, and (to) ask for intercession for Ukraine.
“We are going to pray for the country, the Ukrainian military, and the conversion of the Ukrainian people,” said the women, who belong to a Marian prayer group named Mother of God of Perpetual Help.
During the pilgrimage, 18 members from the “Ukrainian Youth of Christ” group in Guissona, Spain — a Catalan town dubbed “Little Ukraine” for its historic Ukrainian enclave, which grew substantially after Russia’s full-scale invasion — pledged a solemn oath of loyalty to Christ, according to the UGCC’s Eparchy of St. Volodymyr the Great in Paris.
Pilgrims Oksana and Natalia described the UGCC’s church in Lourdes, the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, as “home-like.”
Consecrated in 1982, the church is the only Eastern Catholic house of worship at Lourdes, and symbolizes the oneness of the global Ukrainian community, which has sustained multiple displacements over time due to the Second World War, Soviet repression and, most recently, post-Soviet Russian aggression under Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The church’s frescoes, designed by the late Polish artist and iconographer Jerzy Nowosielski (who was of Ukrainian origin), include a sanctuary image of the Oranta — the Mother of God at prayer, her hands extended to heaven.
In his homily for the pilgrimage’s Oct. 13 Divine Liturgy, Bishop Hlib Lonchyna, apostolic administrator of the Eparchy of St. Volodymyr the Great, exhorted faithful to recall that despite weaknesses and failures, humans are a reflection of God’s glory.
While at Lourdes, pilgrims offered multiple prayers invoking Mary’s intercession and recited the rosary in front of the basilica at Lourdes.
“We are confident in our hearts, in our faith, (of) the fact that Ukraine will win and be free,” said Oksana and Natalia.
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