Last Monday, the Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halych and Primate of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, presented his book “Chronicle of a Sacrilegious War” at the headquarters of CEU San Pablo University in Madrid. The book compiles his homilies and statements from the first year of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, a testimony to the war, “an evil incarnate that human reason often cannot explain.” It all began with a short video message at the start of the Russian attack, in which the archbishop wanted to show that they were still alive, but that message went viral, and then many others followed. Three months later, every new message was translated into six languages: Polish, Italian, English, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Later, Croatian state television began airing these videos with Croatian subtitles. “That’s when I realized,” Shevchuk said, “that the voice of the Mother Church is a force from God.”
“The word is not just about conveying a message, but a force,” and that idea was reinforced for Shevchuk in March 2022, when he was visiting a town about 100 km from Kyiv that had been bombed with 20 missiles. In his small parish, he met an elderly woman who gripped his hand tightly: “We are terrified, but it’s so nice that you’re speaking to us.” Schevchuk replied that he didn’t know what else to say, but the woman insisted: “It doesn’t matter what you say; what matters is that you speak to us.” That moment reminded him of an experience he had while serving in the Soviet Army at a hospital in his hometown: “A man had been hit by a train; he was in terrible pain, and his chances of survival were very slim. His wife came to the hospital, and he asked her to speak. She sat down beside him and began reading a book; the pain subsided, and in the end, the man survived.”
“Is it possible to be a Christian in times of war? Yes, it is possible,” says Shevchuk, who recounts a meeting with Pope Francis during which he asked for advice: “I often ask the Lord, ‘Why did you resurrect Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union? Why did you resurrect our Church, which was annihilated during the communist era? Why are you making us face death again?” The Pope’s reply was: “No, what it means is that you have a mission.” For Shevchuk, that mission is to answer very difficult questions because war causes people to ask themselves fundamental questions—questions that no politician or president can answer, and whose answers are found only in the Christian faith, in the word of God. Similarly, it is still possible to remain human in an increasingly dehumanizing war—a drone war in which the enemy even dehumanizes its own soldiers.
“Our experience of faith has ecumenical value; it is not limited to Greek Catholics or Ukrainians—there is something that touches the very fabric of humanity,” Shevchuk noted, mentioning that the first translation was into Polish and that the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, wrote the foreword. For the Spanish edition, the foreword is by a Catholic intellectual from the United States, George Weidel, “a voice that defends the cause of the Ukrainians’ spiritual struggle.” Meanwhile, for the Ukrainian edition, the foreword was carried out by Oksana Zabuschko, a contemporary writer, “an objective voice, but from the outside.” Finally, the epilogue is written by historian Timothy Snyder, who specializes in the Holocaust in the territories of the former Soviet Union and who today “denounces the war against Ukraine as a genocidal war.”
Following the presentation, a question-and-answer session began. Among the audience was Silvia Cortés, Spain’s former ambassador to Ukraine from 2017 to July 2022, who asked—given the current widespread discussion of negotiations with Russia—whether it is possible and appropriate to negotiate with evil, and how to dispel the misconception held by some Spanish Catholics that Russia defends Christian values. “You cannot negotiate with evil, but you can overcome evil with good,” Shevchuk replied, “evil is not omnipotent; only God, the supreme love, is omnipotent.” Regarding the second question, Shevchuk noted that each translation of the book has a different title. In Ukrainian, the title is “Ukraine Fights, Ukraine Resists, Ukraine Prays”; in Polish, “Messages of Peace”; and “Chronicle of a Sacrilegious War” in Spanish. “If a president commits a sacrilege of this magnitude, he cannot be a defender of Christian values; what he is doing is exploiting religion and turning it into a weapon. This war is a sacrilege that offends the name of God.”
I had the opportunity to ask the archbishop about the genocide being committed against Christians in Ukraine, with dozens of priests murdered, churches destroyed, and the Greek Catholic Church banned in the occupied areas. Shevchuk believes that Russia uses religion in the same way as the Islamic State: “The Russian world claims to be the last defender of Christianity against the degenerate West; it justifies violence, killing in the name of God, in this struggle against Westerners—you, who are the embodiment of the Antichrist; and, finally, every Russian soldier who goes to kill Ukrainians and dies in the war will receive forgiveness of sins.” Moscow has spawned a genocidal ideology from a Christian church and has drawn the rejection of the Orthodox Church: “There is a list of more than 500 Orthodox theologians who reject this ideology, and, more recently, the Conference of European Churches has declared this to be Christian heresy.” For Shevchuk, this affects everyone, even if some think Ukraine is far away: “Some think it’s a local war, but that’s not true. We must carefully study the ideology of the Russian world, because it promotes a genocidal idea. The sooner this is recognized, the more lives we will protect.”
“Be good Christians, and the Holy Spirit will give you the discernment to distinguish right from wrong. This discernment will inspire you to show solidarity with Ukraine,” the archbishop concluded.
