Among the images coming from the war in Ukraine, provided by Aid to the Church in Need and other charities, one particularly moving one shows a young man being baptized before he heads out to the war.
The young man is not more than 18 years old, and received baptism and his First Communion in the cathedral of Kharkiv. The chancery there was hit by a missile on the morning of March 1.
This young man was going through the courses at the cathedral to receive the sacraments. Now he enters the war with a new perspective: with the grace of new life in baptism, and the strength of the Body of Christ.
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According to recordings provided by the Ukrainians (and various human rights organizations), Russians used cluster bombs in Kharkiv, which more than 100 countries banned in a 2008 NATO treaty.
While most of Ukraine is Orthodox, some 10% of the population is in formal union with Rome. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church accounts for 8%-10% of the country’s population, and a smaller percentage are Latin Catholics. The Diocese of Kharkiv–Zaporizhia serves some 50,000 Latin-rite Catholics.
And today we celebrate...