“We are running out of tears, out of words,” laments Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, apostolic chaplain and special envoy of the pontiff to Ukraine, reports the Holy See Press Office on April 15, 2022, from northern Kyiv.
“We found so many dead,” he explained after a day spent in the vicinity of Borodianka, after stopping several times to pray in front of the graves of people who were victims of the conflict and in particular in front of a mass grave of 80 people “buried without first or last names.”
In a brief audio message sent to the Holy See, the Polish cardinal reported on Good Friday, which he spent in the northern outskirts of the Ukrainian capital with the Apostolic Nuncio, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas. In a voice heavy with emotion, he explained: “Thank God, faith exists, and we are in Holy Week, on Good Friday, when we can unite ourselves to the person of Jesus and climb onto the Cross with Him.”
Cardinal Krajewski admits that this day has caused him “bitterness” and “suffering.” “After Good Friday… I know, I know: there will be Resurrection Sunday,” he says, hoping that God will explain the horror of this war “with his love.”
This is the third trip the Pole has made to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict. He arrived in Kyiv on Holy Thursday, April 14, with an ambulance – the second offered by Pope Francis – and celebrated the great feasts of the Paschal Triduum with Ukrainian Christian communities.
Cardinal Krajewski had already visited Ukraine as an envoy of the pontiff on a first trip from March 7 to 14, visiting refugees and authorities in Lviv and Kyiv. On March 26, he left for a second trip to deliver an ambulance to Lviv.
And today we celebrate...