Ukraine: With death always near, Catholics hope for God to be present this Christmas
Catholics in a Ukrainian town live under constant threat of missiles and cold. But faith perseveres in Bila Tserkva.
Fr. Lucas Perozzi has been serving as a missionary in Ukraine for 22 years. Originally from Brazil, he was recently moved from Kyiv to the small town of Bila Tserkva, about 60 miles from the capital. He was used to air-raid sirens in the big city, but his first night in his new posting was one to remember.
“On my first day there was a missile attack — a big one. And the major difference to Kyiv was that while in the capital they used to be mostly intercepted, Bila Tserkva doesn’t have the same air defense systems, so they all hit their targets,” he tells Aid to the Church in Need (ACN). “A four-story building collapsed, two people were killed and eight wounded, and several other houses were damaged.”
As in other parts of Ukraine, the war is on everybody’s minds, and death is a constant companion. “Every day we hear of soldiers killed in the war, and every day there is a burial nearby. We face death every day,” says Lucas.
As in past winters, airstrikes often target energy systems. “We have blackouts every day. Sometimes we celebrate Mass by candlelight or a battery powered flashlight when it is charged. The electricity is turned off at 4 a.m. and only turned back on again at around 5 p.m.,” he says.
“Sometimes we have electricity, sometimes we don’t; sometimes we have water, then we don’t, sometimes we have food, other times we go hungry,” the priest says. “Prices are rising, and people don’t know what to do. It is a miracle that people manage to live at all, especially the refugees from the East who live here now. I don’t know how they even survive.”
Renting their own church
Lucas serves the small Catholic community in Bila Tserkva. The community worships in a beautiful church which was confiscated during the time of the Soviet Union, and was never returned. “Now we have to pay rent to pray in the church that was stolen from us. And every year we have to renew an agreement with the Ministry for Culture,” he explains.
The previous pastor began to build a new house to serve the community, with the help of ACN, but it is not finished yet. “It will have chapels, rooms for youth ministry and also a rehabilitation center for war veterans,” says Fr. Lucas.
Amid all these concerns and difficulties, as Christmas approaches, Lucas admits that he and his community have only one wish. “We hope that God will be present in these holidays, that he will make himself present to us, even if the war does not end,” he says. “Even when the war does end, problems will remain: we will have the economic hardship and anarchy that comes in the aftermath of conflict. But all I really wish for is for God to appear in the life of each person I have been sent to. I pray for them every day, for my parishioners, that God might be born unto each of them, because our life here is very fragile.”
–Paulo Aido
