The Chiriaco family share their story at the World Meeting of Families, June 22, 2022. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA.As millions of refugees fled the war in Ukraine this year, a Catholic family of eight made the decision to welcome a refugee family into their home.
Pietro and Erika Chiriaco live in Rome with their six children. The couple explained to their children during family prayer time that welcoming a refugee family would be “like welcoming Jesus.”
This is how Iryna and Sofia, a mother and her 17-year-old daughter from Kyiv, came to live in the Chiriaco family in the southern outskirts of Rome.
The pair left the Ukrainian capital 10 days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and eventually took a bus to Italy.
“The decision to leave was not easy,” Iryna said.
“Today I thank God because he sent so many good people in our path,” she added.
On the platform of the World Meeting of Families, which is taking place in Rome from June 22–26, Iryna and Sofia told the pope their tale alongside the Chiriaco family.
The Chiriacos claimed that their choice to take in the Ukrainian refugees was motivated by their thankfulness to God. The presence of the Ukrainian mother and daughter in their home has been a “gift from heaven,” Erika Chiriaco continued.
Pope Francis expressed his gratitude to the family for their kindness and for serving as an example of what it means to be a “welcoming family.”
“Welcoming is truly a ‘charism’ of families, especially large families,” Pope Francis said.
“We may think that, in a large home, it is harder to welcome other people; yet that is not the case, for families with numerous children are trained to make room for others. They always find space for others.”
The pope continued by saying that a family is where one “experiences what it is to be welcomed.” This, he claimed, can be observed when a family accepts the existence of a child with a disability, an ailing relative, or an elderly person in need of care.
Families are encouraged to virtually participate in this Catholic tradition begun by St. John Paul II by watching media broadcasts and live streams of the speeches and catecheses, according to the 10th World Meeting of Families organizers.
At the World Meeting of Families, Pope Francis commended Iryna and Sofia for sharing their testimony of faith in the face of injustice.
“You gave a voice to all those persons whose lives have been devastated by the war in Ukraine,” he said.
“In you, we see the faces and the stories of so many men and women forced to leave their homeland. We thank you, for you have not lost your trust in providence and you have seen how God is at work in your lives, not least through the flesh and blood people he led you to encounter.”