Robaird O’Cearbhaill
Hong Kong Correspondent
Polish, Catholic archbishop in Poland Adam Szal, welcomed a flood of refugees from Ukraine, meeting those arriving by train. The Church there is implementing urgent, widespread measures, to take care of the victims, the Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported.
“The Church there is calling for citizens to provide space in their homes, along with food, clothes, beds other essential necessities,” CNA added.
“The bishops urged Polish Catholics to open “homes, hostels, diocesan and parish retreat houses, and all places where help can be provided to people in need,” CNA made clear.
“Caritas and others have offered them refuge too to stay at their homes. Catholic organizations in Poland are helping tens of thousands of refugees, providing them with beds, housing, psychological support, food, and clothing,” CNA said.
“The Church’s support is being channeled mainly through Caritas Poland, the country’s largest charity, and diocesan branches of Caritas,” CNA added.
Collections for Ukraine were made in churches around the country on Sunday, Feb. 27, and also on Ash Wednesday, March 2, CNA said.
Hundreds of thousands of escapees have crossed the frontier, according to the Polish Border Guard, since Putin’s military invasion began on February 24.
Poland, East of Ukraine is joined along a 520-km frontier, between 38 million people in the former and 44 million population in the latter.
Another CNA report gave an overview of Catholics in the country. The majority of the Catholic population, in Ukraine 3.6 million, are in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic, Byzantine Orthodox rite. Their head is Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuck of the Ukrainian Archeparchy of Kyiv-Halych.
Almost all the others, Byzantine Orthodox, also, are split into Ruthenian Catholic Eparchy of Mukachevo, (320,000 members) as well as the Latin rite or Roman, rite (371,000) culturally connected to Poland and Hungary. Very few in number are those who practice under the Armenian Catholic Archeparchy of Lviv.
As the CNA explained, the memories are long of Russian interference in their religion, and have been bringing those fears back since the 2014 Crimean invasion and annexation, even more since the current, mass, violent, military invasion.
“Catholic Churches were severely persecuted in Ukraine while the country was part of the Soviet Union, and the renewal of conflict between Russia and Ukraine in the 2010s brought with it fears of ecclesial conflict and persecution.”
“The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church was outlawed under Soviet rule, from 1946 to 1989, and the Ruthenian Catholic Church was suppressed in 1949.”
Archbishop Gullickson was nuncio to Ukraine from 2011 to 2015, and he retired in 2020, at age 70. He strongly warned about Russia taking it Ukrainia by military force. His words are still poignant and relevant today.
“Any number of statements emanating from the Kremlin of late leave little doubt of Russian Orthodox hostility and intolerance toward Ukrainian Greek-Catholics,” he said in September 2014 to directors of Aid to the Church in Need.
“There is no reason for excluding the possibility of another wholesale repression of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church as came about in 1946 with the complicity of the Orthodox brethren and the blessing of Moscow,” he stated.
He explained how “many Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic clergy were forced to leave Crimea after its annexation. Both Roman and Greek Catholics faced difficulties in properly registering ownership of church property and in ensuring legal residency for their clergy,” CNA reported.
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