“There’s this sense that people are surrounded by this fear and the sense of death,” he explained.
Not even pregnant and new mothers are safe from the violence, he noted, pointing to a bombing of a Ukrainian maternity hospital in Dnipro in December 2023 that killed six.
“While we try to promote pro-life and defense of life, we see hospitals where women want to take care of and welcome their children, these hospitals are being bombed. That’s the reality that you are facing,” he said.
Helping ‘the suffering body of Christ’
So far, Czyszek said that the Knights of Columbus have been able to help 1.6 million war victims throughout the country with food, medicine, help with shelter, and other necessities.
Their primary focus has been to help women and children as well as disabled and elderly people. To the Knights of Columbus, Czyszek said, war victims are the “suffering body of Christ.”
In the face of continued attacks, Czyszek said that the most vulnerable, such as the disabled, are often abandoned and forgotten. He described one situation in Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kharkiv in which many disabled civilians had been left in an apartment building without electricity. Unable to escape because of the lack of working elevators, the people had to wait until Knights of Columbus volunteers found them and helped them out of the building.
“Many of them, unfortunately, were just abandoned. Nobody was taking care of them. But our people were there to help them, bring them wheelchairs, mobility, and really just a sense of hope and a reminder that every person has dignity,” he said.
Although material aid is important, Czyszek said that the Knights, with the help of health care professionals, priests, and religious, are also helping Ukrainian soldiers and war victims with “deep spiritual wounds” get psychological and spiritual aid.
Prayer is central to the Knights’ relief efforts in Ukraine. In addition to their many other programs, the Knights of Columbus are building and equipping chapels for wounded victims and refugees and regularly organizing Masses and rosary events in Ukraine.
(Story continues below)
Subscribe to our daily newsletter
Knights of Columbus give MATERIAL & SPIRITUAL support to ????????displaced people. That’s why @KofC organize across???????? rosary prayers asking for Mary’s intercession for peace & return of millions of????????displaced people to their homes. Nothing can break us if faith is in our hearts. Read⬇️ pic.twitter.com/N4WR2kMxlh
— Szymon Czyszek (@SCzyszek) November 29, 2023
According to Czyszek, Ukrainian churches have also been a target of Russian attacks in efforts to erase the country’s cultural and religious heritage. These attacks, Czyszek said, are particularly concerning to the Knights of Columbus.
Ukrainian Catholic Bishop Vitaliy Kryvytskyi of Kyiv–Zhytomyr shares these concerns. He told CNA in October 2023 that the Church in Ukraine is facing extermination.
“We don’t have to guess what’s at stake, we’ve all lived [through] the times of the Soviet Union,” Kryvytskyi said. “What will happen, if the Russian Federation enters our territories and continues entering our territories, is going to be practically the same thing that was before, during the Soviet Union.”
Czyszek said that “over 100 churches have already been destroyed in Ukraine.”
He explained that in Ukraine “churches are not just like pieces of art, but these are the places where people’s identity is formed, and that’s the place that also creates this center of community.”