When Caroline Brennan met Ukrainian refugee Mahamudoff Gazym at an overcrowded bus station in Otaci, Moldova, he spoke about the questions his grandchildren ask that he doesn’t have a concrete answer to: “Who is making all the sounds of the bombs? How long are we going to sleep in the car?”
Archbishop Borys Gudziak, the highest ranking Ukrainian Catholic prelate in the United States, declared during a March 5 online interview, “Morally, Ukraine has won this war.”
In a telephone call with Russia’s foreign minister, the Vatican secretary of state “conveyed Pope Francis’ deep concern about the ongoing war in Ukraine,” the Vatican said.
When news broke that Vladimir Putin had ordered the Russian troops to invade Ukraine, Deacon Daniel Galadza was in Rome, taking part in a conference at the Vatican’s Congregation for Eastern Churches.
A top United Nations official said March 6 that the world hasn’t seen a refugee crisis such as the one developing in Eastern Europe, caused by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, since the last World War.
Stephen Coutcher, a Rhode Island seminarian who spent the summer of 2018 teaching English in Ukraine, urged those who feel helpless about the current situation there to pray for peace.
Refugees crossing the border with Poland are welcomed with a greeting from the Border Patrol: “You are safe now.”
Pope Francis said the Vatican “is ready to do everything to put itself at the service of peace” in Ukraine.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas designated Ukraine for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) on March 3. In response to this designation and the growing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration, Auxiliary Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville of Washington, praised the move.
The attack on and seizure of Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant by Russian forces could lead to an ecological disaster 10 times worse than the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, said the head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
