He told the UN committee on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons that the threat is especially dangerous today.

He highlighted the global increase in rhetoric and threats about nuclear weapons' use, the "tense strategic environment" many countries are facing and the "ongoing modernisation and expansion of nuclear arsenals".

He noted Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned nuclear weapons could be used if Russia faces a serious enough threat from Ukraine.

He said that in the Middle East conflict between Israel and Hamas, the possibility of nuclear weapons being deployed is a real concern.

He also noted that no-one knows if Israel has a nuclear arsenal - if so, some experts say it's likely to be small. Israel maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity on the matter.

While Iran does not possess nuclear weapons, it is reportedly trying to develop them in nuclear facilities Balestrero added.

His views are backed by calculations from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican).

It is quoted as saying global spending on nuclear weapons hit a world record last year.

Ican reported that estimated nuclear weapons spending went up about 13 per cent to a record $91.4 billion during 2023. It attributed the increase in part to a sharp increase in US defence budgets - although all nine of the world's nuclear-armed nations are spending more.

Technologies to deploy the weapons are also advancing.

Madly costly affront to humanity

Balestrero noted the Vatican believes possessing nuclear weapons even for deterrence is morally wrong. So is manufacturing them.

He told the UN that such actions are "an affront to humanity as a whole".

This view is the opposite of the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine, he noted. In that doctrine the opponents have nuclear weapons they can never use as each would wipe the other out.

Balestrero told the UN a nuclear weapons-free world is "both possible and necessary".

He suggested there are three ways to address the increase in rhetoric and spending around nuclear weapons and their use:

Make it so that non-proliferation and disarmament are seen as more than just legal obligations. Show them as "ethical responsibilities towards all members of the human family".

Develop "sincere dialogue" aimed at reducing nuclear weapons stockpiles worldwide.

Spend the money currently invested in nuclear weapons on humanitarian projects.

Source

• Catholic Herald

The outrage follows the death last month of a 59-year-old Orthodox priest, Fr Stepan Podolchak (pictured). The Tablet reports he was tortured to death by Russian soldiers.

Human rights groups condemned his death and those of other priests as egregious violations of religious freedom and as potential war crimes.

Arrests and torture for refusing Russian demands

Maksym Vasin, executive director of the Institute for Religious Freedom, revealed disturbing accounts from Ukrainian clergy detained by Russian troops.

He said they reported being tortured, beaten and subjected to inhumane treatment for refusing to collaborate with Moscow's religious authorities.

"Ukrainian religious leaders were subjected to beatings, arbitrary imprisonment, torture and even attempted rape...for refusing to submit to Russian religious centres" Vasin stated.

Some testified they were abused for declining orders to learn the Russian national anthem.

Lethal strikes on places of worship

The scale of the Russian military assault on Ukraine's spiritual fabric is staggering.

Yevhen Zakharov, director of the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group, said at least 30 priests have been killed and 26 imprisoned by Russian forces since the invasion began in February 2022.

Ruslan Khalikov, head of the Religion on Fire project documenting attacks, confirmed that over 550 religious buildings across Ukraine have been damaged or destroyed, with many deliberately struck despite there being no military targets nearby.

"There are cases when a church is the only building...and there is no nearby object that the Russians could aim at and miss" Khalikov said, emphasising such strikes likely constitute war crimes under international law.

Alleged motives

According to Vasin, clergy reported three key drivers fuelling the mistreatment by Russian military:

• Russian hatred and suppression of Ukrainian identity
• Persecution of denominations outside the Russian Orthodox Church
• Refusal to take orders from Kremlin-allied religious leaders

"The Russian military and representatives...could not believe that Ukrainian religious leaders...could be independent" Vasin added.

Global outcry "egregious violations"

While Moscow has denied the allegations, human rights groups have forcefully condemned Russia's actions, decrying the systematic campaign as an unconscionable attack on religious liberty.

On the invasion's second anniversary, Robert Rehak, chairman of the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, revealed that over 50 Ukrainian clergy had been killed or imprisoned

Russia had committed "egregious violations of religious freedom" he said.

As the conflict grinds on, concerns mount over the indiscriminate targeting of Ukraine's sacred spaces and spiritual leaders defending their nation's sovereignty against Russian aggression.

Source

• The Tablet

Pope Francis will arrive in Lisbon, Portugal on Wednesday for the August 1-6 international WYD gathering.

Delegations of young Russians and Ukrainians are expected to be there despite their countries being at war, Church sources say.

L'Œuvre d'Orient, the Paris-based Church agency that supports Christians from the East, says it's helping pay for nearly 300 Ukrainians' WYD costs.

The Vatican says 18 young adults from Russia will also be at WYD. They'll be with one of Russia's Catholic bishops.

Both groups are said to include young women for the most part, as in both Russia and Ukraine most young men have military obligations.

Some foreign university students living in Russia are among the Russian delegation.

Vatican support

The Vatican is eager to highlight the presence of the young Russians and Ukrainians as an opportunity to encourage 'reconciliation'.

"WYD is traditionally a time for intercultural encounters which can also be encounters of peace," a Vatican source says.

Young people from other war-torn countries will also be at WYD, the Vatican source confirms. These include youth from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

However, a group of Syrian Catholics had to cancel their WYD plans as Portuguese authorities have refused to grant them entrance visas.

Pope's programme

During his five days in Portugal, Francis's programme does not include any specific initiative to bring young Russians and Ukrainians together.

However, there may be an opportunity to do so.

Since the war began, Francis has twice brought Ukrainians and Russians together.

Some criticised him, not for being pro-Russian but for putting the two countries on the same level.

This was the case during the celebration of the Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) this past Good Friday, when he asked a Russian and a Ukrainian to offer side-by-side testimonies about the horrors of the war.

The pope did something similar in 2022 when a Russian and a Ukrainian woman to carry a large wooden cross together and in silence at one of the Stations.

During a weekly general audience last April, Francis urged people to pray for the mothers of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers killed died in the war.

This also provoked criticism.

Fatima, a symbolic location

Peace will likely be a recurring theme in the speeches and homilies Francis delivers at WYD.

He will almost certainly focus on peace this coming Saturday when he goes to the Marian Shrine of Fatima.

About 100 years ago the shrine was a constant reference point for the Church as it prayed for the conversion of 'atheist' Communist Russia.

One of Fatima's 'visionaries' revealed Our Lady had told her to pass a message to the pope: he was to consecrate Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Francis referred to this message in March 2022, when he re-consecrated Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

"This is no magic formula but a spiritual act," Francis said. Rather, the consecration was like calling to a "Mother" for help.

Source

• La Croix

He condemns himself to be treated as an apostate, the religious equivalent of a political traitor.

This is the extent to which Russia will go in silencing those within the Orthodox Church who have not whole-heartedly backed its invasion of Ukraine.

The latest victim of this systematic purge is a man named Ioann Koval.

This previously unknown priest in an ordinary parish - St Andrew's in Lyublino, a district of Moscow - was suspended from the priesthood simply because he did not use his pulpit to call for more bloodshed.

What happened?

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow last September 25 instituted a liturgical invocation of his own invention: "Behold, the battle is being waged against Holy Rus' to divide its undivided people. Rise up O God, for the help of thy people, and grant us victory by your power."

He solemnly added this obligatory and bellicose supplication to the long anthology of his anti-gospel formulas.

Koval is involuntarily the living proof of this unity of Orthodox Slavs.

He was born in 1978 in the city of Luhansk in the Donbas region of Ukraine.

He studied piano and theology in Moscow, where he met and married his wife, a Russian who teaches literature. Koval, who is the father of five children, was ordained in 2004 and dedicated his ministry to patients in psychiatric hospitals.

He was then assigned as the second parish priest of Saint Andrew's, and it was there that he began to publicly substitute the word "peace" for the word "victory" in the spirit of the Beatitudes.

A denunciation

A campaign against the priest began in January, likening him to Judas Iscariot.

A sacristan at the parish who is linked to a network of informers the patriarchate has set up, denounced Koval to the parish rector, Archpriest Victor Shkaburin, who is a Putin apparatchik and more a follower of military marches than monastic chant.

The wheels of clerical bureaucracy, an obsequious relay of the Kremlin, were then set in motion.

The cautious episcopal vicar, Archbishop Matfei Kopylov, phoned Father Koval and told him he was suspended.

The ban was put into effect on February 2nd by an order of Patriarch Kirill.

It was stated that the priest, who was guilty of who knew what would be brought before the ecclesial court.

At the end of March, under the aegis of the protopresbyter Nikolai Inozemtsev - rector of the Church of Our Lady of Kazan on Red Square - a disciplinary commission was sent to St Andrew's to investigate.

What it actually did was collect a handful of hostile gossip and ignore the numerous testimonies that confirmed Koval's pastoral dedication.

The stage was set for a remake of the Stalinist trials in the courtroom of the high priest of "all Russia".

The sentence fell on May 11.

The five judges wearing sumptuous pectoral crosses voted unanimously against Koval.

The priest, not yet aware of the secret indictment, was summoned to appear.

But he aggravated his sentence by refusing to acknowledge his guilt.

He was defrocked according to the 25th Apostolic Canon.

This late and debated juridical code imposes deposition "if a bishop, presbyter, or deacon be found guilty of fornication, perjury or theft".

Profession, not God, but Putin

Perjury?

According to the docile Archpriest Vladislav Tsypine, vice-president of the court, the recidivist offender "violated his oath of unconditional obedience to the Church hierarchy by expressing a political opinion incompatible with the priesthood".

Vakhtang Kipshidze, the cynical spokesperson for the Patriarchate, added: "If a priest changes the words of the prayers according to his political preferences, the very unity of the Church is undermined."

Is peace a subjective option for those who celebrate the Eucharist?

As the theologian Sergei Shapnin rightly notes: "In the Russian Orthodox Church, there may be but one 'political preference': that of Patriarch Kirill… which means all the clergy (to say the least) are bound to adhere to a single pro-Kremlin ideology."

And this is to ensure that believers serve not God but Putin.

After so many other priests were unjustly dismissed in former Soviet or satellite countries, Ioann Koval can hope, if he manages to go into exile, to see his priesthood restored by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

In the meantime, Russia is gradually being drained of the spiritual resources that would allow it to resist today and to regenerate itself tomorrow.

This is the other side of the evil that we cannot underestimate.

• Jean-François Colosimo is a French theologian and historian specialising in Russia and the Eastern Orthodox faith in which he was raised.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

"Technical investigations are ongoing due to abnormal attempts to access the site," Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told Reuters Nov. 30, without elaboration.

The perpetrator and motives of the alleged hacker or hackers, in this case, remain unclear.

The attack came a day after Russian leaders criticised Pope Francis for comments he made about Russia's war in Ukraine in a recent interview.

In the interview, the pope described Ukraine as a "martyred people" and singled out two Russian ethnic minorities — Chechens and Buryati — as "generally the cruellest" in the conflict.

The Vatican's ageing main website has attracted other hackers, too.

In 2012, the Italian branch of the activist hacking group Anonymous took down the Vatican's website using a simple "denial of service" hacking method, whereby the site was artificially flooded with traffic in an attempt to overload it. Continue reading

"Hitler is dead but Putin is alive and he is repeating history with the Ukrainians," declared Stanislaw Fidurski, a 95-year-old retired colonel at Friday's march, which was led by four hussars dressed in historical costumes.

He said Poland could form a larger state with Ukraine — an idea supported by two septuagenarians Marek and Piotr who said it would help Warsaw to "resist Russia". Read more

The Italian news agency Askanews reported the ambassador, Aleksandr Avdeyev, said the exchanges of prisoners occur in accordance with the lists of military prisoners of the Armed Forces of Ukraine; the lists are handed over by Francis.

"In this case, we highly appreciate the personal actions of the pontiff, who is carrying out a very important humanitarian mission that allows hundreds of people to return to their families," Avdeyev said. Read more

Their stories "simply break the heart, make the blood run cold in your veins.

"This war will go down in history as one in which Russia uses sexual violence as a weapon against Ukraine," said Shevchuk.

Pramila Patten, Representative of the UN Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, confirmed last week that rape is part of Russia's "military strategy".

It is a "deliberate tactic to dehumanise the victims," Patten says.

"When women are held for days and raped when you start to rape little boys and men, when you see a series of genital mutilations when you hear women testify about Russian soldiers equipped with Viagra, it's clearly a military strategy."

Patten says the UN has verified over 100 cases of rape or sexual assault in Ukraine since Russia invaded in February.

Victims' ages range from four to 82 years old.

"It's very difficult to have reliable statistics during an active conflict, and the numbers will never reflect reality because sexual violence is a silent crime," Patten observes.

"Reported cases are only the tip of the iceberg."

On Monday this week, over 100 Ukrainian women were released from Russian captivity.

Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian Presidential Office, says it was the first female-only exchange. It was "especially emotional and truly special," he says.

"Mothers and daughters, whose relatives were waiting for them, were held captive."

The next day, Shevchuk thanked God that the women were able to return to their families.

"Let us wrap these women together today with our attention, love and prayer, and warm them up with our national warmth," he said.

Reflecting on recent Russian attacks on Ukraine, the archbishop noted in conditions of war, families find themselves in a sea of violence and malice that destroys a person.

"This war will go down in history as one in which Russia uses violence against the intimate sphere of a person as a weapon against Ukraine," he said, citing statistics about rapes and pregnancies resulting from rape.

"It is impossible to imagine how much this violence against the intimate sphere of a person hurts the Ukrainian family, the dignity of men and women [and] destroys what the Lord God created for love."

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Forbes

With the pope surrounded by empty seats in Kazakhstan, critics questioned the efficacy of his diplomacy of encounter and his strategy of silence when it comes to outright condemning human rights violations in China, Russia and Nicaragua.

But Vatican diplomacy insiders urge patience, arguing that even as the pope remains silent, the institution's diplomatic corps is hard at work behind the scenes, advancing the cause for dialogue.

Soon after being elected, in 2013, Pope Francis scored a major win for Vatican diplomacy efforts. As the United States and its allies prepared for an offensive against the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria, the pope beseeched all parties involved — including Russia — to stop the conflict.

According to the memoirs of the then-foreign minister of Australia, Bob Carr, the tensions were diffused as Russian President Vladimir Putin urged U.N. member states to "listen to the pope."

Three years later, Francis sat down with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in the airport of Havana for a meeting that seemed to pave the way for the pope to be the first Catholic leader to visit Moscow.

Vatican observers marvelled at the peacemaking prowess of the pope from the Global South. But today, as Ukraine enters its seventh month of war with Russia, Francis seems to have lost his touch.

The pandemic forced a meeting between Francis and Kirill to be rescheduled, and the two met instead in an online conference in May where the pope warned the patriarch not to become "Putin's altar boy."

But even as Pope Francis refused to openly condemn Putin and Russia for the war in Ukraine, relations with the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church chilled.

Victor Gaetan, author of "God's Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy, and America's Armageddon," thinks that's only half the story.

"The Holy See is the only Western institution that has an ongoing dialogue with the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church," Gaetan said, speaking to Religion News Service on Tuesday (Sept. 20).

"It was actually the Western states, and especially the United States, that have failed in the path of dialogue with Russia and its state religion," Gaetan said.

Gaetan said that Metropolitan Anthony, chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church's foreign relations department, has kept a steady relationship with the Vatican and even met with Pope Francis in May to tell him that while Kirill wouldn't be going to Kazakhstan, there would be a Russian Orthodox delegation in his stead.

While "any leader could be accused of not having done enough," Pope Francis could have probably been more outspoken at the international level, said Mario Aguilar, professor of religion and politics at St. Andrews Divinity School.

Aguilar, the author of "Pope Francis: Journeys of a Peacemaker" and a political adviser for the Vatican, told RNS that the Vatican "is a finite institution" and its foreign policy is no stranger to failure. "I have seen Pope Francis say many times: ‘Let's pray and let's try again.' But he's not bothered by failure," he said.

Francis' struggle to gain traction on the path toward dialogue was also evident when Xi, the Chinese president, reportedly refused to meet him while they were both in Kazakhstan. "I didn't see him," Francis said, vaguely answering questions by journalists while on the flight returning from Kazakhstan on Thursday.

In 2018, the Vatican and China signed a controversial and secretive deal on the appointment of bishops that is up for renewal in the coming weeks. One of the major critics of the deal, Cardinal Joseph Zen, a human rights activist and former bishop of Hong Kong, was arrested by Chinese authorities and put on criminal trial on Monday.

"Here at the Vatican, there is a dialogue commission that is doing well," Francis said during the in-flight news conference, but he added he doesn't "feel like qualifying China as antidemocratic because it's such a complex country."

Francis has remained quiet on the persecution of Uyghur Muslims and the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in order to support the Sino-Vatican deal, which promises to breach the historical rift between the state-recognized Catholic Church in China and the "underground church" approved by the Holy See.

William McGurn, the former speechwriter to U.S. President George W. Bush, wrote an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal on Monday declaring, "The Pope Abandons Cardinal Zen." Cardinal Gerhard Müller, formerly at the head of the Vatican's doctrinal department, criticized Rome's silence on Zen's arrest during a summit of cardinals at the Vatican in late August.

"Nobody has raised the grave question of our brother Zen," Müller told fellow cardinals and the pope. "I hope he won't be abandoned."

According to Gaetan, critics of the pope's diplomacy are part of "a campaign against Pope Francis' diplomatic approach with relations with Russia and China."

Gaetan pointed to the fact that a long-standing group studying Holy See-Chinese relations might soon move from Hong Kong to Beijing and that the Sino-Vatican agreement will likely be renewed in October.

"The pope and his diplomats will not change because of this criticism," Gaetan said. "Their mission is clear and has been practiced for centuries," he added, pointing to the fact that even the fiery St. John Paul II did not interrupt dialogue with Beijing after the events at Tiananmen Square.

Aguilar believes it's a mistake to expect a public pronouncement by Pope Francis on international diplomacy. "It will be the very ancient, slow cup of tea of Monsignor Paul Gallagher that will solve everything without a press conference," he said, referring to the Vatican's head of relations with states.

Instead of "a soft diplomacy," Aguilar added, the Vatican operates a "very hard diplomacy" by leveraging its numerous faithful in the world through its nuncios and the Vatican's foreign office.

In Catholic-majority Nicaragua, Pope Francis has not publicly denounced the oppressive government of President Daniel Ortega, which has been openly hostile toward the Catholic Church by arresting clergy members and banning feasts and processions.

But Aguilar foresees "a regime change, because in a very Catholic country when you oppose the Catholic Church, you are opposing your people. If your people cannot celebrate Mass, go to processions or say prayers and celebrate the feasts. Eventually, they will not vote for you."

In countries where Catholics are a majority, like Nicaragua, the Vatican's efforts are more impactful. But in places such as China or Russia, where the Catholic faithful represent but a tiny fraction of the population, it's much more difficult for the Vatican to promote its interests and create the basis for dialogue.

"People expect the Vatican, the oldest diplomacy, to act very rashly," Aguilar said.

After the attack on Pearl Harbour, Pope Pius XII kept diplomatic relations with Japan, angering the Allied forces. Years later, the Catholic Church became instrumental in recovering English and American prisoners in the Eastern country.

"The basics of diplomacy at the Vatican is a continuity of at least one century," Aguilar said. "It looks very slow, but only because it's not public."

• Claire Giangravé - Vatican Correspondent RNS. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

Honcharuk describes life in his diocese at the moment.

Could you describe the situation in your diocese, which has become the main theatre of this terrible war?

Our Church is alive and active!

Priests and faithful are in their places, and prayer continues to flow, as does the daily liturgy in parishes.

More in some than in others, depending on the location: where war activities are going on, or territories are occupied, there is no such possibility. Yet our Church serves the people, the elderly, and children, as well as helping our soldiers who defend our homeland.

How do you feel in this fifth month of the war?

The first shock is over; now there is permanent tension.

We're constantly in anticipation, especially when there's shelling and it's unclear when and where it will hit.

The day before yesterday, it was some 1,000-1,200 meters from us, in a straight line.

Last night, the bombs hit somewhere very close to us.

I know that I will not hear the missile that strikes me. So, when I hear an explosion, it means I'm still alive.

We are prepared for sudden and unexpected death.

That means we often go to sacraments, especially confession.

It is a completely new experience, a different way of life. I get up in the morning and realise that I am alive.

In addition to that pain, suffering adds a sense of helplessness because it overwhelms you.

Evil is so great and so cynical that it topples the great of this world from their thrones.

Wars are very easy to trigger, but how to stop them?

On the other hand, there are also great signs of God's presence amid the whirlwind of war, in the hearts of people who are serving in various places as soldiers, medics, firefighters, policemen, as well as in other services.

By looking into the faces of these people, we can witness the great, divine power of love with which God inspires them.

What is the situation in Kharkiv now? Are people coming back, or have they now begun to leave again?

The situation is constantly changing.

For example, one man might come to see his apartment but immediately leave again.

In general, people are leaving because of the constant shelling in Kharkiv.

There is shelling before lunch, after lunch, and at night.

We are very close to the front line, literally twenty kilometres.

Before the war, the city of Kharkiv had a population of 1.7 million. At the moment, there are about 700,000, less than half.

But other cities in the diocese, such as Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, or Bakhmut, are very dangerous places in the actual warzone.

Practically everyone has already escaped; there are few people left in those cities.

What is everyday life like in a city under constant fire?

The situation of each family or each person is different.

If a person's house is undamaged, they have a place to live, and if they have a job, they have funds.

If the house is destroyed, the person has nowhere to live. And if they don't have a job, if their workplace has been destroyed, the person is left without funds.

And when on top of that they have been injured…

Sometimes people have only what they were wearing because everything burned down with the house.

Therefore, some people need clothes, some need shoes, medicine, or food, some just need support, and some a place to stay.

Others need someone to take their family to safety.

There are many problems and tasks ahead.

Do people have access to the things they need? Is there work?

The destruction of the city is calculated at about 15%.

This is irreparable damage.

But the city's infrastructure is working; it can withstand the strain.

Those plants and companies that can continue to work, people in them still have jobs, and some others have been completely moved to other Ukrainian cities.

Hospitals, and municipal services, which are responsible for electricity, gas, water, sewage, garbage collection, street cleaning and public transport, are still working.

It all works.

If they destroy something, in twenty-four hours, you wouldn't even know anything happened; the municipal services clean everything up and take it away.

The fire department, police, and other services are fully working too.

People try to live normally even though the war is so present in our city. Schools and universities work online.

And what about the financial situation?

Only some banks have their branches open.

Also, only certain ATMs work. For the most part, these physical locations remain closed for security reasons. But the entire financial sector is working; bank cards are working everywhere. Shops are partially open.

I was in the market yesterday - only half of it burned down.

Where stalls and kiosks survived, they are still selling there.

Cathedral of Kharkiv used as warehouse due the war.

But people can't buy anything because they don't have money. People here are not wealthy.

The wealthy left long ago, but those who live from paycheck to paycheck remain, they count every penny, and now they are in a very difficult situation.

Even from the clothes, one can see that such a person has always led a dignified life, but the war has made them poor, or homeless.

Many people have also been affected psychologically, and some began abusing alcohol.

In some cities, far from the front, people are already ignoring the air-raid alert. How about in Kharkiv, are people taking cover, or ignoring the alerts and just going about their lives?

At the beginning of the war, people reacted more when there was shelling, they generally did not come out of their basements and shelters.

Many did not come out at all, they lived there constantly, and some are still very panicked to this day.

There are streets where people hardly felt that the war is going on because it was completely quiet. And there are also neighbourhoods where everything is destroyed.

I see that most people have become braver; the tired psyche begins to suppress the sense of danger.

What is the security situation like?

People stand around and keep talking when the shelling is far away, and when the shells are heard closer, they scatter.

But when nothing happens for two or three minutes, people come out again.

The day before yesterday, a father was driving a car with his son. They had come to the city to file papers for university and were returning home.

Suddenly a shell directly hit the car. Some debris was left from the car, but their bodies were torn to pieces.

As you see, people continue to drive during the shelling, and some will make it through, and some will not.

But let's not think that people are irresponsible.

The danger lasts so long that somehow you have to learn to ignore it, but you also have to think and make decisions.

Previously, people just didn't control it: they would run away, and then they would start to think. But it is very exhausting when you have to run away ten times in a day.

People fleeing but also seeking refuge in the diocese

Some people from Kharkiv, or other frontline cities, moved to the nearest villages - to their relatives or to empty houses there. But when they saw that it didn't end, some began to go further.

Inside the country, too, you need to find a place to live and work, and there are many difficulties involved. On the other hand, going abroad means that only the wife and children can leave, and the husbands have to stay in Ukrainian territory, because of martial law.

This is a huge blow to the family, and to the spouses; it causes great suffering.

People are constantly on the move.

Some settle somewhere and get a job, and some fail.

Sometimes it seems as if people are finally settled in a new place, and suddenly they are told: "sorry, we have to ask you to leave our house".

The fate of each move is different but always difficult.

Some come back because they say it is easier for them to live under fire, in danger, than to live as refugees.

In this situation, who are you? You have no rights, you can't plan anything, you have nothing of your own.

You always feel that you are hovering over someone's head and that others are watching you too.

It is very difficult psychologically.

If someone wants to try, let them leave their home for a month, inviting themselves to another's house, then another, then a third, then a fourth, always as a guest, and moving all the time.

Working with refugees and internally displaced people?

Here in Kharkiv, we have the Marian Fathers and Caritas, they are helping displaced people, as many people who have lost their homes have come to the city.

Here, not far from the border, twenty houses in one village were wrecked yesterday.

Russian troops are simply destroying our Ukrainian villages, and then the survivors flee to the city because it is no longer possible to live there.

Displaced people from nearby villages are also coming to Kharkiv, although Kharkiv is still under shelling every day.

We also work in other places, we help by distributing humanitarian aid, things for children, food, diapers, or just being available to talk. There are such cases in Poltava, Sumy, Konotop, Dnipro, as well as in Zaporizhzhia and Pokrovsk.

• Fr Jurij Blazejewski for Aid to the Church in Need.
• Aid to the Church in Need is supporting the Catholic Church in Ukraine in its commitment to stay on the ground and keep serving its flock in the face of material and economic war.

It isn't just any war, of course, but a war of conquest perpetrated by Russia invading a sovereign nation.

And it is a war that has seen massive numbers of unspeakable war crimes.

These war crimes have included, among other things, the intentional and systematic targeting of civilians.

The evidence includes mass graves, intentional destruction of hospitals, execution-style shootings of civilians, and, yes, horrific sexual violence.

Sexual violence is being explicitly used as a tool of war, not only to motivate the grotesquely evil soldiers who are raping Ukrainian women and girls, but also to subdue the population in the short term and impact Ukrainian birth rates in the longer term.

Russian soldiers, apparently, hoped that "their captives would recoil from sex in the future and thus not bear Ukrainian children."

I hope that everyone reading these words is outraged that anyone could even contemplate (much less engage in) acts that are so evil.

I can barely write them without feeling rage in my heart.

The level of evil present in the acts is so overwhelming that one thought about whether anyone should ever engage in them is one thought too many.

But here is why academic arguments over ethical theory, though at times esoteric and deeply disconnected from reality, can be so important for the real world.

The ethical theory that dominates so much of our secularized culture — whether we are talking about medicine, whether we are talking about finance, and, yes, whether we are talking about foreign policy — is utilitarianism.

This is the theory that explicitly says that all acts are in principle morally acceptable if they can produce the greatest good (pleasure, preference-satisfaction, happiness, etc.) for the greatest number of people.

Now, there are several deep problems with this ethical theory.

There is, for instance, no way to peer into the distant future to determine what will in fact produce the greatest good for the greatest number.

Human beings are notoriously bad at making these calculations — just look at the super confident and longstanding (but deeply misguided) worries about so-called "overpopulation."

Also, some goods just cannot be compared with each other in ways that can be made to fit into a utilitarian calculation. Ethicists call this the "incommensurability problem."

We just lived through several examples of this problem in the early part of the pandemic.

How, for instance, should we have compared the utility of young children learning how to communicate through facial expressions versus the utility of masking children in school?

How should we have compared the utility of the elderly not dying alone versus the utility of keeping healthy people away from those infected with COVID?

The answer is that these goods cannot be compared in any meaningful way — for the goods involved are incommensurable. But comparing them is exactly what utilitarianism requires.

Perhaps the central problem with utilitarianism, however, is that it cannot simply say an act is wrong because it is an act of injustice against another person. So, Russian soldiers executing or raping a 12-year-old girl might be wrong on this view, but one would need to first show that the act produces less utility.

Now, the best advocates for utilitarianism are what are sometimes called "rule" utilitarians.

They agree that it is silly to make a comparison of net utility for every single act but instead insist that, over time, we have learned which rules produce the most utility.

It is bad to execute or rape a 12-year-old girl, not because it violates fundamental justice but because — in the long run — it will produce less utility than if we didn't have a rule against it.

But it just isn't clear that these practices don't "work" in very similar ways to other kinds of tried-and-true war-time tactics. Indeed, Russia has been taught that these practices "work" in multiple circumstances, including the horror show of the war on Chechnya, in which they used the massacre of civilians in a "deliberate campaign to terrorize the population into submission."

Ultimately, however, the question of whether killing the innocent and engaging in violent nonconsensual sex are wrong must not be a question of whether or not they "work."

Some acts are just so heinous, so evil, so utterly inconsistent with the good that they can never be done under any circumstances.

In my world of Catholic moral theology, we call them "intrinsically evil acts," actions that have such evil, such grave evil, at their heart or object such that there can never be exceptions.

Basic, fundamental justice and human dignity require that the act is always and everywhere deeply wrong.

This doesn't mean doing away with complexity and gray areas.

Plenty of Catholic moral theologians who reject utilitarianism still engage in difficult moral questions on a host of matters, from abortion to save the life of the mother to the use of large doses of pain medication at the end of life to when one can legitimately foresee that one's actions will lead to the death of the innocent without intending that death.

But the horrific war crimes perpetrated by Russia should be yet another reminder of the morally impoverished vision of utilitarianism.

We must stand for fundamental justice in ways that deem certain actions always and in every circumstance deeply, profoundly evil. And this means rejecting utilitarianism in favour of fundamental justice, especially for the most vulnerable.

• Charles Camosy is a professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham University.
• First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

If he were alive today, he would be in his 90s, but he died when he was three years old, victim of what would today be a minor infection. However, before the development of antibiotics there was no such thing as a minor infection.

Had Martin caught that infection two decades later, he probably would not have died. He was a victim of the not-yet that living when he did imposed upon him and his family.

That is the problem with living in time rather than some sort of timeless eternity. The past puts limits on us in the present while the future only tantalizes us with hopes and possibilities that may happen but will themselves be limited by constraints handed on from and through our time.

There is no such thing as "starting from scratch." We cannot erase the past and start anew. We must build on what the past presents to us, advancing the good and ameliorating the bad. But we cannot start over.

Our action or inaction occurs in a context that shapes it and forces a response that falls short of any ideal. And so, my grandparents could only watch, weep and pray as their little boy suffered and died.

Jesus lived with the same limitations. The Incarnation means that he, though God the Son, was hemmed in by his time, his culture, his language, his religion, his education, his society and much else. He transcended many aspects of it.

But there was much he could not do. He and we can only live in the world we inherit and inhabit.

That is why searching Scripture for simple answers to modern challenges is seldom of use. WWJD (what would Jesus do?) today is unknowable because he did not have to "Do" what we must do.

That is one of the reasons that Christian doctrine and practice have evolved over the millennia: they must re-do their "Do" in every new age.

That uncomfortable truth faces us as we gaze horrified at Russia's war against Ukraine.

While there are people — generally people far removed from reality — who like war for political or voyeuristic reasons, most of us want peace despite the different descriptions and conditions we might give to it.

Vladimir Putin has created a context of violence for Ukraine and the rest of the world that cannot be met solely by nonviolence. It must be met with varying degrees of regret-filled counter-violence.

The day when violence can be halted by non-violence has not yet come

The alternative is to allow violent bullying to go unconfronted in any realistically effective way. The war in Ukraine poses a challenge to absolute pacifism that would condemn any military action, or at least refrain from supporting it.

We know that the violent response to Russia's attack and violations against the few norms to limit atrocities in war will do little to relieve the world of violence.

That response may even create a new Cold War if it does not expand to the broader World War 3 that Russia's foreign minister has threatened.

In fact, by supplying Ukraine with weapons and military intelligence while damaging the Russian economy and oligarchs through sanctions and confiscations, other countries are engaging in that war by proxy.

Is there a realistic alternative? If it were possible to reset the world to a state where violence could, in fact, be headed off or halted by innocence, then non-violence of the sort epitomized by saints like Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King would be more generally effective than it has been.

Thanks in part to their example, a case can be made that non-violence is growing as a way to defang the demon of violence. Perhaps through activities such as theirs the world will one day be violence-free. We can and must hope, pray and work for that day.

It took the worst war in history to stop the genocidal madness of Nazi Germany and Japan in the last century and there is no reason to believe that anything other than war would have done so.

One result of that horrific violence was revulsion toward much that was considered normal until then and is now deemed atrocity.

Russia's use of indiscriminate urban bombing and the threat to use tactical nuclear, biological and chemical weapons are condemned as a throwback to a kind of warfare that in Europe at least has been outgrown.

So perhaps we are advancing, but the day when violence can be halted by non-violence has not yet come and we must live without a reset button in a world of not-yet.

That means that even we who follow the Prince of Peace must in some situations accede to and even participate in war with the hope that it may somehow make the situation better for those who come after us.

As my grandparents faced Martin's illness and death, I assume they hoped for a day when other parents would not endure the same.

• William Grimm is a missioner and presbyter in Tokyo and is the publisher of UCA News.

Meanwhile, many of us are discovering just how little of the geography of the Ukraine we knew and are saddened that knowing the names of the suburbs of Kyiv and the of towns like Mariupol is but a grim index of human inhumanity.

"Homo homini lupus"

With every passing hour the number of deaths in that war, the images of human suffering, and the wanton destruction grows. It challenges us as human beings, as Europeans and as Christians.

Meanwhile, many - but, sadly, not all - religious leaders are seeking media space to condemn aggressive war and the trampling of frontiers, to encourage us to pray for peace, and, often, to point out that so many in both Russia and Ukraine claim the name of Christian and declare themselves to be followers of him whom we greet as the Prince of Peace (Is 9:6).

One Loaf / One People "Though many, we are one body because we all share in the one loaf" (1 Cor 10:17) - we need to show this unity in sacramentally.

Words are cheap

But there is a problem with these Christian leaders calling for dialogue, their awareness of common values of respect and co-operation, and their presentation of a vision of peace.

What if these leaders were presented with a request from one of their communities that it invite some other Christians - who do not share the same ecclesial or theological background - to their Eucharistic meal? What would these leaders then say about common roots, common values, and a common destiny?

With deepest regret I have to acknowledge that these same Church leaders would be quite strident in their willingness to build up walls of exclusion, to note dividing and unbridgeable chasms, and even to suggest that their ideal union of sisters and brothers in Christ could only come about by the complete absorption by them of another Church.

In the ecclesiology of these leaders - now rightly clamoring that Christian sisters and brothers make peace and build bonds of love - the ideal unity for which Jesus prayed (Jn 17:21) can only come about if another community is like a wayward province which has to be forced back into subjection.

Or it can only come when that degree of harmony is reached which they know to be impossible except at the eschaton!

Being prophetic vs using dissonant language

Preaching prophetically can be difficult but we are called also to act prophetically.

If we use the language of division and the practice of separation at the Lord's table - which is, after all, the very expression of our unity in the Anointed One (1 Cor 10:17) - then using the language of peace when looking outwards is undermined as inauthentic.

The urgency of the human situation which needs models of people transcending division and selfishness demands that we model this in our very core: at the table that recalls the table-fellowship of Jesus who scandalously created unity out of division (e.g. Lk 15:2) and the table of our human destiny when people will come from north and south and east and west to rejoice in peace (Lk 13:29).

We need to model peace and communion

A Church leader, no matter how eminent in title, who is unwilling to actually model with his/her sisters and brothers in baptism the unity in the one loaf and one cup (1 Cor 10:14-7) cannot with integrity preach or witness peace and community to a fractured, suffering world.

In addition to common statements and pleadings that point out that war is sacrilegious, we need to demonstrate that we, the baptized, can actually share at the Lord's Table.

This would manifest reconciliation, show that what unites us is greater than what separates us, and model sacramentally our vocation in Jesus.

Many Church leaders who are happy to add their names to statements might find that actually sharing the loaf and cup with a brother just too difficult!

If we cannot solve this division - and stop our unbloody war (bellum incruore) — what hope is there that we that we can offer anything to those who make bloody war?

Embracing is not enough: the time has come to show their unity in the sacrament of unity.

Imagine!

Imagine Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople and Pope Francis of Rome sharing fully that the Lord's Table by eating and drinking as brothers in the Lord!

Imagine Pope Francis and Archbishop Justin Welby of Canterbury doing likewise!

If you cannot imagine that, then you should not be surprised that shells are falling - with a perverse "Christian" benediction - on Mariupol.

Our fresh embrace of one another in Eucharistic fellowship - humbly sharing in the Loaf and Cup - ­is the euangellion, the Botschaft, the Hope, the Gaudium Magnum that suffering humanity needs to see right now.

• Thomas O'Loughlin is a presbyter of the Catholic Diocese of Arundel and Brighton and professor-emeritus of historical theology at the University of Nottingham (UK). His latest book is Eating Together, Becoming One: Taking Up Pope Francis's Call to Theologians (Liturgical Press, 2019).
• First published in La Croix International. Republished with permission.

A good Jesuit, Francis is applying the maxim "Pray as if everything depended on God, work as if everything depended on you," a Vatican official told La Croix's Loup Besmond de Senneville.

In the Vatican, prayer is also closely linked to the diplomatic efforts undertaken since the beginning of the conflict.

"You don't put diplomacy in one box and spiritual activity in another," said a Holy See diplomat.

"If we are conducting this diplomacy, it is because we are Catholic," he said.

"There are different levels of action," said a Roman Curia official close to the pope, pointing out that these include prayer, diplomacy and solidarity.

"It's as if these dimensions were somehow the floors of the same building.

"When it comes to prayer, the pope is trying to play a different card with a much more spiritual aspect.

"It is a card that only the Vatican can play," said the diplomat.

Friday's act of consecration is linked to the Marian apparitions that are said to have taken place at Fatima in 1917 and is intimately linked to petitions for peace.

"Free us from war, protect our world from the menace of nuclear weapons," Francis prayed.

During the ceremony, Francis pointed out that the consecration is not a "magic formula".

Calling it a "spiritual act," Francis said the consecration is "an act of complete trust".

He said it comes from children who, "amid the tribulation of this cruel and senseless war that threatens our world, turn to their Mother, reposing all their fears and pain in her heart and abandoning themselves to her."

The prayer service is Francis' latest effort to rally prayers for an end to the war.

"We are on the verge of the third world war: for Francis, it is urgent to mobilise all spiritual forces," a close friend of Francis told.

"Francis' gesture may raise some eyebrows. But it is, in fact, profoundly realistic", writes Dominique Greiner, La Croix's senior editor.

Consecrating Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary reminds us that the roots of war are always in the human heart: we, therefore, need spiritual remedies to put an end to it.

Greiner goes further, calling the consecration "prophetic"; the defenceless voices of prayer denouncing the deployment of increasingly sophisticated weapons that sow death and desolation.

Francis praying like this Greiner calls a sign of hope, a sign that peace is possible.

On Sunday, the Holy Father followed up his Friday prayer for peace by telling thousands gathered in St Peter's Square that the threat of a global conflict spawned by Russia's invasion of Ukraine should convince everyone that the time has come for humanity to abolish war before it abolishes humanity.

"More than a month has passed since the invasion of Ukraine, since the start of this cruel and senseless war which, like every war, is a defeat for everyone, for all of us," he said to thousands of people in St Peter's Square for his Sunday blessing.

"We must repudiate war, a place of death where fathers and mothers bury their children, where men kill their brothers without even seeing them, where the powerful decide and the poor die," Francis said.

"I beg every politician involved to reflect on this, to make a commitment and, looking at martyred Ukraine, to understand that every day of war worsens the situation for everyone," he said.

"Abolish war now, before war erases humanity from history."

"Enough! Stop! Let the weapons fall silent. Negotiate seriously for peace," he said.

Sources

• La Croix International
• La Croix International
• Associated Press
• Reuters

However, a Catholic professor in the country said the pope's plan was likely to provoke a negative reaction from the Russian Orthodox Church, which could see it as infringing its "canonical territory."

"For Catholics, this gesture isn't about faith, but about people and peace between two countries — but Orthodox bishops will wonder why the pope is consecrating two predominantly Orthodox countries in this way," the professor, who asked not to be named, told Catholic News Service on March 17.

Father Kirill Gorbunov, spokesman for the Russian bishops' conference, said because there had been disinformation and propaganda attacks in Russia and Ukraine, the bishops had restricted their remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin's "special military operation" to avoid "contradiction and conflict" among Russian Catholics.

"But although everyone acts on their own understanding and we can't always agree about what's being done, we are all absolutely united in our deepest desire that the suffering of innocent people should stop immediately — and profoundly grateful for all efforts being made to stop the bloodshed," he told CNS. Continue reading

I often check international news sites and so seeing devasting media coverage is normal, but I knew this was different.

It then hit me all at once that I was, through my computer screen, witnessing the beginning of a war.

Needless to say, I was horrified.

As I continued watching the events unfold, I was, in a rather unusual way, called to prayer.

My typical response to major events like this is to talk with people about it and eventually I will often remember ‘I should probably pray about this.'

But yesterday was different.

And as so, I responded to God. I made the sign of the cross, and asked God for peace, for the protection of the people of Ukraine, and to provide the world with an alternative to this violence.

I then took to Facebook and asked my friends to do the same, quoting Pope Paul VI who famously said: "No more war, war never again."

Fools

Later that day it came to me in thought, maybe a divine thought, that God has already given us an alternative to this violence - Jesus.

And especially the cross.

The weakness of Jesus' cross is the very anthesis of human violence.

It was then I remembered learning in biblical studies that Paul had called the message of the cross "foolishness."

Admittedly, in a phone call with my brother discussing the Ukraine crisis, I felt like a fool when I restated my commitment to non-violence.

But that's exactly why Paul said what he did; ‘in the way of the world' responding to airstrikes, tanks and armed soldiers with more airstrikes, tanks and armed soldiers is the thing to do - in some sense, it's what we've always done, and responding any other way would be foolish.

Peacemakers

But as Christians, as people, we cannot love our enemies as Jesus commands us to, and simultaneously prepare to kill them.

This is not the way of Jesus; this is not Christ-like.

And so, Jesus calls us to another way - what the theologian Walter Wink calls the ‘third way.'

But Jesus didn't just call us this way, he lived it too.

The Prince of Peace scolded Peter as he resorted to violence saying to Peter, "Live by the sword, die by the sword."

By accepting the cross, the Prince of Peace chose not to respond to violence with more violence, or sin with more sin.

Jesus chose to be a peacemaker. And yet we continue again and again to live by the sword and die by the sword.

Christ-like in the current Ukraine crisis

• First, like Jesus, and as God called me to yesterday, we must pray. Pope Francis has called us to the "weakness of prayer" in response to this crisis, including a day of prayer and fasting for peace on Ash Wednesday.
• Second, and again like Jesus, we must stand against the oppressive powers and with the oppressed. In other words, we must be in solidarity Ukraine.
• Third, like Jesus on the cross, we must actively resist violence with non-violence. In other words, we must be peacemakers.

Being a peacemaker does not mean passivity.

Peacemaking involves the active resistance of violence, but not by playing by the same set of rules as violence.

The Christian pacifist Shane Claiborne writes that "Peacemaking is about interrupting injustice without mirroring injustice, resisting oppressors without becoming oppressors."

How we do this?

We must turn again to prayer and ask God to show us.

As well as prayer we might also

• Apply a negative screen to our investments in companies that might be even remotely associated with war.
• Consider applying a positive screen to ethically safe peace-based investments.
• Consider contributing to Aid to the Church in Need where we know all contributions are directly spent on the cause.
• Protest outside the Russian Embassy in Wellington.
• Write to the Russian Ambassador.

• Tim O'Farrell is a Catholic committed to Jesus' way of peace and non-violence. He is a master's student at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago.

The verification will be of the "religious formation received" by servants of the cult of all religions.

The newly renewed Duma will have the power to approve or not "the activity of servants of worship and religious personnel who lead celebrations and rituals, in the realization of missionary tasks or teaching on the territory of the Federation".

If the formation received is deemed "unsatisfactory," the newly consecrated person will be required to participate in special "additional education courses in specially licensed institutions of study whose programs have received accreditation in accordance with state standards."

Thousands of Protestant communities, in particular, are at risk, where religious education is largely free and there is no clear distinction between clergy and laity, let alone between "patriotic" or international education in the theological-spiritual field. Continue reading

They fled their village in a panic, the older children carrying the little ones, walking for seven hours just to getaway. The youngest children are shaking, their cheeks are bright pink from the cold.

Finally, a van stops — it's a godsend. The family piles in with their hastily filled bags containing just a change of clothes, which they managed to grab in the darkness as they ran.

In the last two months, more than 832,000 people have fled the last opposition-held territory in Syria in the wake of a relentless air campaign and a swift ground offensive by the Syrian regime and its Russian backers. Tens of thousands of people are still on the move. Nearly 700,000 of the newly displaced are women and children, according to the latest UN figures.

There is plenty of international condemnation, but little action to relieve the situation in Syria's northwestern province of Idlib and the surrounding areas.
The van takes Samar and the six kids in her care to her sister-in-law's house in a village close to the town of Atarib. It's not far enough, but for now it will have to do.

"I don't feel better here," Samar told CNN. "We need to leave but we need to try to figure out transport or something because if we try to walk it will be impossible."

Just a few doors down, Umm Abdo's kids wait outside, bundled up in their winter coats as she finishes loading a truck with mattresses and blankets. The airstrikes are getting too close. It's time to leave.

"We are only taking a little, just some clothes, only what we need," Umm Abdo said.

She walks into the bedroom one last time and pulls out the kids' toys from the closet.

Eight-year-old Dima grabs her favorite — a pink teddy bear called Hamze. The youngest, two-year-old Betoule, grabs a yellow chick. Ten-year-old Abdelbased keeps his hands in his pockets — he is too old to play with stuffed animals anyway.

They fled their home two years ago, but had created new memories and a sense of stability in this house. The kids were in school and they had friends.

Umm Abdo tells the girls to put the toys back. They don't protest or hesitate, seemingly hardened well beyond their years, and head out to the truck.

After a final look around the house, Umm Abdo walks out, locking the front door behind her. It's an incredible act of optimism as the Syrian regime onslaught continues and the future looks bleak. Continue reading

Msgr. Igor Kovalevsky says killing the royal family "was one of the first steps on a path of mass murder, forced labor, religious persecution and genocide which led on through the Stalinist period,". Read more

They suggested faith groups could use their ability to mobilise people and public opinion, and lay out the moral and spiritual case for disarmament.

The Nobel laureates joined with leading Vatican and secular diplomats who urged world leaders to freeze investment in nuclear arms production.

Instead, the money should be for peace and development initiatives.

"Every day we are bombarded with bad news about the atrocities ... harming each other and nature, about the increasing drumbeat of a possible nuclear conflagration and the fact that humanity stands on the precipice of a nuclear holocaust," keynote speaker Cardinal Peter Turkson said.

Turkson, the first prefect of the Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development, was one of many voices at the Vatican-organised meeting asking for peaceful ways to be found to resolve the world's problems.

Entitled "Prospects for a World Free from Nuclear Weapons and for Integral Disarmament," the summit drew a line-up of world leaders.

These included United Nations and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation officials, representatives from nuclear powers including Russia and the United States, as well as South Korea and Iran.

Turkston said fears of a potential global catastrophe are rising to a level not seen since the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In his view ongoing discussions about nuclear weapons are "critical".

He said decisions made by global leaders about peace and war in the coming months and years "will have profound consequences for the very future of humanity and our planet."

Source

• Crux
• EWTN News
• Image: National Catholic Reporter