The Pope’s Almoner in Ukraine: “Pain and anger for the dead young soldiers”
The emotion, the discouragement, then the anger, a deep anger: “Why are young people still dying in war in 2024? Lord, this is enough!”. It was an intense moment that the cardinal experienced this morning Konrad Krajewski at the cemetery of Ternopil, the city in western Ukraine where the almoner delivers an ambulance equipped as a mobile resuscitation center to the Zboriv district hospital, together with various essential and life-saving drugs from the Vatican Pharmacy and the Gemelli Polyclinic. These are the Pope’s new gifts for this population wounded by war: “A sign of love and hope”, Cardinal Krajewski tells the Vatican media for the seventh time in the country attacked since the beginning of the conflict.
The Polish cardinal arrived in Lviv yesterday and this morning, around 4, he arrived in Ternopil. “The parish priest was still asleep – says Krajewski -. In order not to wake him, I went to the nearby cemetery and there was an area for the recently buried soldiers. Young, young, their photos under the cross: 20-23-25 years old… I stayed so bad, even angry: why are young people still dying in war in 2024? Lord, this is enough! It’s not possible that the world produces weapons, everyone earns and these guys lose their lives.” That pain increased when the cardinal, at a certain point, saw a young woman arriving: “She stood not far from me, in front of her husband’s tomb, she was pregnant. In my coat of arms I have this word: mercy… But really today I had difficulty with mercy. Why do they still shoot, why do they kill? I know that mercy is a scandal, which surpasses justice, which is the second name of God, but today it was difficult for me to apply this word in the cemetery in Ukraine. Then the words of the Litany of the Sacred Heart came back to me, I thought that I cannot judge according to the world and I calmed down.” “We men – adds the cardinal – are capable of doing extraordinary things in the world, but also terrible things, without mercy and this has lasted for over two years in Ukraine”.
In addition to delivering the ambulance, Krajewski inaugurated, together with the local bishops, the “St. John Paul II” rehabilitation center in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Kamyanets-Podilskyy, for the integral, physical and psychological rehabilitation of those who have suffered war trauma. Krajewski will then return to Lviv. Along the way, he says, he will stop to find different communities “to be with the people, bring them a hug, a sign of hope from the Holy Father, to tell them that he prays for them during every audience and Angelus, who does not forget them and is close to him
