Ukraine’s Catholics — and other believers — face a weariness after more than 20 months of war confronting a Russian invasion force, but a delegation of the faithful had a message for Washington amid signs that U.S. support for Kyiv and its cause may be waning.
Things may be tough, but “we don’t lose hope on victory,” Bishop Vitalii Kryvytskyi, who oversees the church throughout the nation and the Kyiv-Zhytomyr diocese, insisted late last week as his delegation advocated for religious rights and continued support for the war-torn nation.
The delegation was in Washington even as a major economic and security aid package from the Biden administration was facing an uncertain future on Capitol Hill. House Republicans stripped any Ukraine money from a bill with aid for Israel that passed last week. They said aid to Kyiv would be taken up at a later date.
Speaking through a translator in a telephone interview, Bishop Kryvytskyi noted that it has been more than three decades since religious freedom was restored in Ukraine following decades of communist rule. Today, Ukraine’s Catholics see what is happening in Russian-occupied areas in the east and south, and that the picture isn’t a pleasant one.
“We see that after the territories that the Russian Federation has occupied, this lack of freedom of religion has returned,” he said. “Our main challenge is to support these people who are living there in these occupied territories and have to suffer this lack of freedom of religion.”
He said, “Unfortunately the only help that we can provide these people is prayers, because it’s impossible to provide any other type of help. We can also be [an] advocate … on the international level.”
Though most Ukrainians belong to the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity, there are nearly 5 million Catholics in the country, according to a 2019 State Department estimate.
The bishop, who also heads the Catholic Bishops Conference’s commission on relations between the church and the Ukrainian government, was part of a delegation organized by Razom for Ukraine, a U.S. nonprofit, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations. The church leaders met with government officials here to sound the alarm about the state of religious freedom in Ukraine and the toll Russia’s invasion has taken on religious life.
“Many things have changed in our daily pastoral work ever since” the February 2022 invasion, he said, “and for sure in the next 10 years we won’t be able to go back to the normal, comfortable pastoral work.”
He said that under current circumstances, the churches “don’t only take care of the essence of church matters, but because of what has happened, we are involved in many social matters.”
He said the plight of the “innocent people who are dying” under Russian attacks compelled the church leaders to ask not only for food assistance but also to press other nations to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses against drone attacks, a request he acknowledges is “weird” for religious figures to make.
Bishop Kryvytskyi said that he and his colleagues at the same time have taken up the cause of those Ukrainians who have been convicted on charges stemming from their conscientious objection to fighting. While the country’s constitution allows for alternative service in such cases, seven criminal trials are underway on charges of refusing military service, according to Forum 18 News Service, a Norwegian group that monitors religious freedom issues.
Three others have been convicted and sentenced to prison, including Dmytro Zelinsky, a Seventh-day Adventist who was given a three-year prison sentence this summer.
The bishop said the pan-religious organization brought its concern over the detentions and prosecutions to Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on Oct. 18, and the council is trying to “find alternatives for the people [whose] faith doesn’t allow them to carry a weapon.”
• Mark A. Kellner can be reached at mkellner@washingtontimes.com.
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