Ukraine: Fighting on the spiritual front 

For two years, Bishop Vitaly Krivitskiy of the Latin Diocese of Kyiv-Zhytomyr has lived in a time of war. Faced with a distraught people, he is organizing his parishes into sanctuaries of faith and preparing his priests to offer “spiritual first aid” to soldiers at the front. 

At 52 years of age, Bishop Vitaly Krivitskiy is leading a diocese of 70 priests, all of them facing misery every day as a result of the war in their country. They witness the mourning, the fear of the future, the power cuts, and poverty. “Alongside their ordinary pastoral work, they are also carrying out social action as an increasing significant part of their activity,” explains Bishop Krivitsky to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).  

When the “Special Military Operation” was launched by Russia at the end of February 2022, the bishop wrote to his priests, “If you must leave, because you judge that it is impossible to stay, no one will condemn you. But your parishioners need you.” And none of them left their post, not even the 15 foreign priests who were in his diocese as missionaries.  

Parishes as safe havens 

Obliged to manage the emergency, the bishop instructed the parishes to become safe havens for all refugees: to adapt basements or crypts into shelters, and to stock reserves of drinking water, petrol, and electric generators. “I want our parishes to become citadels on which the war has no hold,” the bishop tells ACN. “Places where you can be warm, protected from the bombs, but also where you can talk to a priest and receive a certain comfort.” In three mobile kitchens, 1,000 meals a day can be prepared for the most deprived people. Always with the goal of pulling the population away from war, summer camps are organized for young people with the help of ACN. At the front, the bishop asks volunteer priests to provide “emergency spiritual care” in the style of military nurses. They must support soldiers confronted with despair and distribute “spiritual emergency kits,” including a Bible and a Rosary, without receiving aid from the state. 

But the passing of time has taken its toll on these efforts. The generators, which are not designed to be used permanently, are getting tired. “Our resources are dwindling,” says the bishop sadly. 

And there is another worrying problem: the government has said that it will mobilize all men “without the least exception.” That could include priests, which would destroy Bishop Krivitsky’s work. The Ukrainian authorities, touched like the whole country by secularism, could opt for the extreme solution of enrolling priests without distinction. Certainly, neither Ukraine’s allies nor civil society would appreciate such a measure, but the difficult military situation could be used as a pretext to go ahead. 

“We never speak about the distant future” 

The coming winter might be terrible for the country, which is subject to the onslaught of Russian artillery. The power grid, which is 80 percent destroyed, could be cut, which would make life impossible for the civilian population.  

However, the bishop is not looking too far ahead. “We never speak about the distant future. We only ask ourselves what we can do to respond to this or that emergency.” 

For the moment, he primarily needs prayer: “It’s not just words, when you pray for your neighbor. There are real effects.” Then he hopes to get through winter, and that the generators work correctly, as they are the only recourse during the freezing cold if the electric lines are cut.  

Since the war started, ACN has supported priests in their pastoral mission among the faithful in extremely difficult circumstances. Since the beginning of 2023, ACN has allocated more than two million dollars for various pastoral and emergency projects in Ukraine, of which about $160,000 has gone to the Latin Diocese of Kyiv-Zhytomyr. In addition to this, more than two million dollars have been sent to priests in the form of Mass offerings, including $135,000 specifically for Bishop Krivitsky’s diocese.