ROME — Ukrainian Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk prayed Monday that God might grant Ukraine victory over the “unjust aggressor.”
The Ukrainian people “have been suffering from a full-scale military invasion for 187 days,” Archbishop Shevchuk said in a video message, and for the past two days “the Ukrainian land shuddered from Russian missiles and bombs along the entire front line, which stretches from Kharkiv Oblast in the north, through Luhansk Oblast, Donetsk Oblast, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson Oblast, to Mykolayiv Oblast.”
The Russian occupier has “poured fire” on the Ukrainian land and the enemy is “relentlessly attacking,” the archbishop said, with the most intense fighting and highest casualties taking place in the Donetsk region, around the cities of Slovyansk, Bakhmut, and Avdiyivka.
Moreover, Russia shelled the center of Kharkiv for the second time, “using cluster shells, which are prohibited by international law,” Shevchuk declared.
Through all of this, “Ukraine is crying,” he said. “But Ukraine is standing. Ukraine is fighting. And Ukraine is praying.”
Along with his chronicle of the most recent incidents from the war, the archbishop also took the occasion “to sincerely thank all the benefactors in Europe and the whole world who are helping Ukrainians today.”
In doing so, they “help the poorest,” he added.
We thank “all good people from all over the world who take a piece of bread from their own mouths in order to help Ukrainians suffering from an unjust war,” he said. “To all of you good people, to all of you, our donors, may the Lord God reward you a hundredfold.”
“O God, bless the Ukrainian army!” he prayed, as well as all those who find themselves in the occupied territories “without a piece of bread and without an opportunity to earn a living by honest work.”
“O God, bless the Ukrainian people with your peace and grant victory over the unjust aggressor and all the injustice that is happening to us today,” he said.
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