ROME — Ukrainian Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said Monday that Russia seeks Ukraine’s complete annihilation in its “full-scale military invasion.”
“The enemy comes to take away our future, to tell us, Ukrainians, that we should not exist, that we have no right to exist as a people and as a state,” Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said in a video message, while urging his compatriots to dream of a bright future for the nation.
Our homeland “is already experiencing 124 days of full-scale military invasion of Russia into the territory of our sovereign state,” the archbishop said. “These are 124 days of bloodshed, great battles, patience, weeping, suffering of innocent children.”
Against the Russian narrative, faith allows us to see that “the Lord God does not just see Ukraine and has her in His original plan, but rather He has prepared for us a special mission, in the modern world, in the contemporary Church, a mission to the human person in third millennium,” he declared.
This past weekend was “marked by great tragedies in Ukraine,” the archbishop lamented, and on Sunday “Ukraine experienced perhaps the most massive missile strike in its history by Russia.”
“Russian cruise missiles flew at Kyiv, Chernihiv region, Cherkasy region, Odesa region, Mykolayiv region, and the city of Kharkiv and our Sumy region all came under fire,” he stated. “In fact, there is probably no city, place, or region of Ukraine that has not been wounded by this ruthless war.”
“But Ukraine is standing! Ukraine is fighting! Ukraine is praying!” Shevchuk declared. “And we thank the Lord God, and we thank the Armed Forces of Ukraine, that we have lived to this morning, and we can see the light of day.”
In his address, the archbishop also recalled the memory of the Ukrainian martyrs of communism, “who were raised to the altars of the Universal Church by Pope John Paul II during his visit to Ukraine,” and invited his hearers to look to them for strength.
“Today, during the dramatic circumstances in Ukraine, we ask the Lord God for this special gift, the special fruit of the Holy Spirit, which is faith,” he said, the same faith “that shone in the New Martyrs of the Ukrainian Church, who carried the Word of God to the ends of the earth, to Siberia, to Kazakhstan and to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.”
“Today, we ask that those martyrs who could see the future of the Church and the people in prison, live and fight for it, open the horizons for us today for our Ukrainian existence,” he said.
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