Currents News Staff
How is the Ukrainian Catholic Church bracing for war? Jesuit Father Andriy Zelinskyy is the coordinator of military chaplains and was waiting inside a Kyiv bomb shelter the day Russian troops invaded the country.
“This is a completely apocalyptical theme,” Father Zelinskyy said, “to think something like this is happening in the 21st century in downtown Kyiv. This is unbelievable, unacceptable. But this teaches us a lot. It teaches us that lies cost lives.”
Father Zelinskyy ministered full time with troops on the front in Eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2018 and had been part of an ecumenical and interreligious working group pressing for the law but running up against a “post-Soviet mindset” that either saw military chaplains as unnecessary or as a violation of the separation of church and state.
He said in the early morning, Ukraine was attacked by aerial mission invasion.
“There are those trying to leave the city in the morning. There are huge traffic jams,” Father Zelinskyy said. “Then there are those who stayed behind in the city who are praying right now.”