Pope Francis tells Ukrainian Catholic leaders to persevere in hope amid Donbas conflict

July 6, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Vatican City, Jul 6, 2019 / 10:45 am (CNA).- One day following his private audience with Vladimir Putin, Pope Francis met Friday with leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, encouraging them to persevere in hope and prayer amid the conflict in Donbas.

“Ukraine has been living for a long time a difficult and delicate situation, for over five years wounded by a conflict that many call ‘hybrid’, composed as it is by war actions where those responsible are camouflaged,” Pope Francis said July 5 in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.

The pope said that “the weakest and the smallest pay the highest price” in the conflict, which he said is “aggravated by propaganda falsifications and various types of manipulation, including the attempt to involve the religious aspect.”

Pope Francis told Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, the members of the Permanent Synod, and the Metropolitans in the meeting to have prayer and the spiritual life as their first priority, not worldly concerns.

“You are a Church that knows how to speak in spiritual and not worldly terms … On the night of the conflict that you are going through, as in Gethsemane, the Lord asks his people to ‘watch and pray,’ not to defend oneself, let alone to attack,” Pope Francis said.

“The main role of the Church, faced with the complex situations caused by conflicts, is to offer a witness of Christian hope. Not a hope of the world, which is based on things that pass, come and go, and often divide, but the hope that never disappoints,” he said.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in the fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region since 2014, and nearly two million people were internally displaced by the conflict.

“Prayer and self-giving to the end are the answers the Lord expects from His own. Only these answers are Christian, they alone save from the worldly spiral of violence,” Francis said.

Pope Francis prayed that God would “comfort the souls of those who have lost their loved ones because of the war, of those who bear their wounds in body and spirit, of those who had to leave the home and work and face the risk of looking for a more humane future elsewhere, far away.”

The conflict in Eastern Ukraine began in 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the Maidan Revolution in which Europe and NATO leaning faction gained power in Kiev. Russian separatists in Donbas reacted and began fighting with the Ukrainian military.

Pope Francis did not mention Russia or his meeting the previous day with Russian President Vladimir Putin in his published remarks to the Ukrainian Catholic leaders.

A statement from the Holy See Press Office July 4 said that Pope Francis discussed Ukraine with Putin during their 55-minute meeting, but did not give any further details.

“The encounter with Jesus, the spiritual life, the prayer that vibrates in the beauty of your liturgy transmit that beautiful force of peace, which soothes wounds and instills courage, but not aggression,” Pope Francis said.

Christian minorities, including Catholics and Evangelicals, living in the Russian-occupied separatist parastates in Donbas were subject to kidnappings, torture, robberies, and the expropriation of church buildings at the initial phase of the occupation, according to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

The Lugansk People’s Republic parastate in eastern Ukraine announced in 2018 that it would require registration of all religious groups in its territory, which according to USCIRF experts, “could be a prelude to the official exclusion of religious minorities.”

“Christian hope, nourished by the light of Christ, makes the resurrection and life shine even in the darkest nights of the world,” Pope Francis said.

“I carry you in my heart and I pray for you, dear Ukrainian Brothers,” the pope said. “I beg the Lord to accompany the actions of all political leaders to seek … the common good, peace.”

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Pope: Without the Eucharist, everything the Church does is vain

April 20, 2018 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Apr 20, 2018 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During a brief day-trip to two small Italian cities, Pope Francis stressed the centrality of the Eucharist to the life and actions of the Church, saying without Christ’s love and self-sacrifice, everything would be done in vanity, since everything Jesus did was for others.

“The Eucharist is not a beautiful rite, but it is the most intimate, the most concrete, the most surprising communion that one can imagine with God: a communion of love so real that it takes on the form of eating,” the pope said April 20.

The Christian life begins again at each Mass, “where God satiates us with love. Without him, the bread of life, every effort of the Church is vain,” he said, and, quoting deceased local Bishop Tonino Bello, said “works of charity are not enough, unless those works are done with charity.”

“If love is lacking in those who do the works, if the source is lacking, if the point of departure is lacking, which is the Eucharist, then every pastoral commitment is merely a whirlwind of things,” rather than an act of service.

Pope Francis spoke during Mass in the Italian town of Molfetta. He traveled to the city after making a brief visit to Alessano as part of a half-day trip to mark the 25th anniversary of the death of Antonio Bello, known as “Don Tonino,” an Italian bishop whose cause for beatification opened in 2007.

In his homily, Francis said whoever receives the Eucharist takes on the face and mentality of the Lord, who is the bread that was broken for us. And this bread, he said, does not “rise with pride,” but is given to others.

The person who receives the Eucharist, he said, “ceases to live for themselves, for their own success, to have something or to become someone, but they live for Jesus, as Jesus, which is for others.”

Quoting Bishop Bello, Francis said the Eucharist “does not support a sedentary life,” and that without rising from the table, one remains an “unfulfilled sacrament.” He asked those present to question themselves as to how they leave every Mass, and whether or not they go out as “people of communion.”

He then emphasized the importance of the Word, which he said is a second element that can be taken from the day’s Gospel reading from John, in which the disciples asked themselves “how can this man give us his flesh to eat?” after Jesus spoke about the need to eat his flesh in order to obtain salvation.

“Many of our words are similar to this,” the pope said, noting that some people might ask: “how can the Gospel solve the problems of the world? What use is it to do good in the midst of so much evil?”

By doing this, “we fall into the error of that people, who were paralyzed by discussion about the words of Jesus, rather than ready to welcome the change of life asked by him,” Francis said, adding that these people did not understand that the words of Jesus were the path to life.

Jesus, he said, “does not respond according to our calculations and the conveniences of the moment, but with the ‘yes’ of his whole life. He does not look for our reflections, but our conversion.”

Pointing to the conversion of Saul, who later became St. Paul, Pope Francis noted how when Saul was thrown from his horse he was told to rise, go into the city and do what he would be asked.

“The first thing to avoid is staying on the ground” or staying “gripped by fear,” he said, stressing that a true apostle of Jesus “cannot simply get along on small satisfactions,” but must always get up and look forward.

And, just as Saul was told to go into the city, each Christian is also told to go, rather than staying “closed in your reassured spaces. Risk!” he said.

Christian life “must be invested in Jesus and spent for others,” he said, adding that an apostle cannot remain stationary after the resurrection, but must “go out, regardless of the problems and uncertainties.”

“We are all called, in whatever situation we find ourselves, to be bearers of paschal hope” and to be “servants of the world, but resurrected, not employed. Without ever complaining, without ever resigning ourselves.”

“It’s beautiful to be couriers of hope, simple and joyful distributors of the Easter alleluia,” Francis said, and closed his homily praying that the Word of God would free Christians and help them to rise and go forward with courage and humility.

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