ROME, Italy — Ukrainian Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said Thursday that the Ukrainian people “don’t just believe in victory, we live and work for it.”
Marking the 190th day of “the big, bloody, and unjust war that Russia is waging against the Ukrainian people,” Archbishop Shevchuk released a video message chronicling the recent days of Russia’s assault on Ukraine.
Between Wednesday and Thursday, “the Ukrainian land shuddered from Russian weapons of various types: in the air, at sea, on land,” he said, while active hostilities have focused in the Donetsk region, and in the Ukrainian-controlled Luhansk region.
“But Ukraine is standing. Ukraine is fighting. Ukraine is praying,” he declared.
Ukrainian artillerymen in the military assembly center check the weapons and special equipment to make them ready before they go to their duties at the frontline in Kherson, Ukraine on July 15, 2022. (Metin Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
The enemy “probably does not fully understand that he is really fighting with a large nation of millions, with people who felt the power to win,” the archbishop observed, and thus it is becoming ever clearer that “the Ukrainian people are capable of defending their homeland.”
Reflecting further on the postwar future of the Ukrainian nation, Shevchuk urged his countrymen not to fall into the errors that plague much of the modern world.
In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, honour guard soldiers prepare to rise the Ukrainian national flag during State Flag Day celebrations in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, August 23, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
“We know that the family, as a faithful, fruitful, inseparable union of a man and a woman, is the only human institution created by the Lord God Himself,” he said, and the family “existed earlier than any other types of formation of human society.”
The family is “the primary cell of every society and state,” which explains why the natural family “has special rights in the state and society, which must be respected and ensured.”
“It is very important to ensure the right of the family to raise and give birth to children,” he added, and only when this right is defended can we talk about the true well-being of a people and a state.
The archbishop also reflected that as schools in Ukraine struggle to open in coming days, “more than 2,400 schools and educational institutions were deliberately destroyed by the Russians,” a statistic that is “particularly dramatic.”
“On this day, the whole world should understand that Ukrainian children have the right to study,” he said. “And Ukrainian students have the right to acquire knowledge in the best and highest schools, universities, and higher educational institutions.”
“O God, bless our students and our student youth,” he prayed. “O God, bless the parents of our pupils and students. O God, bless the teachers and professors.”
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