Ukraine. Mgr. Yazlovetskyi (Caritas-Spes): “Thank you Italy! Our children suffer and need serenity”

“We are very grateful to the Italian Church. Children in Ukraine suffer a lot from this war and have an immense need to spend time of leisure and serenity.” AND mgr. Oleksandr Yazlovetskyi, auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Kiev-Zhytomyr and president of Caritas-Spes, to give voice to the gratitude of the entire Ukrainian Church for the initiative “It’s more beautiful together”, supported by the Italian Episcopal Conference, which also allows this year and for the third consecutive year, 700 minors and their companions from Ukraine will spend some time on holiday in Italy. “I know many families, even here in Kyiv”, adds the bishop, “and I know that even children fall into depression due to the constant alarms, the sound of sirens, sometimes even the noise of explosions. They hear the news coming from the war fronts every day on TV. When children, especially the youngest ones, hear the sirens they start to cry and it is difficult to calm them down afterwards. I learned of the case of a child who, due to a bombing here in Kyiv, began to stutter and his parents have now turned to a speech therapist to help him recover his language.” Before starting the interview, the bishop refers to the latest statistics (updated by the government as of May 27, 2024). Since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion (February 24, 2022), 548 Ukrainian children have died and 1,351 others have been injured. Most of the children were affected in the Donetsk region (532), Kharkiv region (378), Kherson region (152), Dnipropetrovsk, Kiev, Zaporizhzhia and Mykolaiv. War destroys and unfortunately does not look at the age of its victims. But it’s not just the dead. “There are also children deported to Russia”, adds the bishop. Behind the numbers, there are lives broken forever. The president of Caritas Spes reminds them. On May 25, a 12-year-old girl was killed during a Russian airstrike on a hypermarket in Kharkiv. She was part of the city’s Greek Catholic parish, together with her mother, who was also a victim of that bombing. On May 26, two boys, aged 9 and 12, were injured in the shelling of a village in Bohuslavka, Izium district, Kharkiv region. As reported by Ukrinform, again on May 26, a funeral ceremony was held in Odessa, at the Transfiguration Cathedral, for 4-year-old Zlata, injured in a missile attack on April 29; doctors fought for the child’s life for almost a month, but unfortunately there was nothing they could do.

How do children react to this news?

Children hear this news, often even on TV. They know that their peers are also dying under the bombs and they are afraid. For this reason, having the opportunity to leave the country at war for a while helps them psychologically to recover, to be stronger and to return more calm”.

Italy is also a perfect holiday destination.

We had the Black Sea where before the war everyone went to rest. It was a beautiful place for holidays. We too, as Caritas and as parishes, have organized various school camps on the shores of the sea in the past. Now everything is blocked. The waters, full of mines, are polluted due to war remnants. Furthermore, missiles are fired from the sea. It is very dangerous and for this reason it is forbidden to go. There were also the Carpathian mountains. Are beautiful. Many vacationed there. Now the families have been forcibly separated. Husbands, all men in general, are at the front and women don’t feel like traveling in these situations. In short, we no longer have a place to take people, and especially children, on holiday. You have the beaches of the Mediterranean. You have mountains. We are very grateful for the opportunity you have offered these children to live a few days in peace, without the noise of weapons, without the fear that something could happen at any moment. They will arrive tired because here in Ukraine, they practically live in a state of continuous stress.

There is a people waiting for them in the dioceses that have joined the initiative. How important is it to be welcomed by the Church in Italy?

It’s true, I also wanted to say that for us, as the Catholic Church, the fact that our children are welcomed by your parish communities, by your children and by your families is a sign of welcome and also of evangelization that will certainly remain in their hearts , forever. As I have often said in the past, for us Ukrainians it is also very important that a democratic and Christian country like Italy shows solidarity. They are initiatives that say with facts and not just words that Europe and Italy are with us. The risk is that as time passes, Ukrainians may feel alone and abandoned. It is important to experience first-hand the closeness and compassion of a people like yours towards us. It’s a way to also confirm that we are on the right path.