During a visit to Ukraine this week, the president of the Council of Bishops’ Conferences of Europe visited the wounded Ukrainian soldiers and their families.
According to a news release from the office of the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius, Lithuania, also found recently released convicts among the injured soldiers.
Grušas “expressed heartfelt words of support and consolation to [the soldiers’] mothers and wives| and bestowed his blessing on the soldiers, who expressed their desire to return to fight in the Ukrainian army after they have recovered”, the press release said.
The archbishop is the apostolic commander of the Lithuanian armed forces as well as the current president of the Council of the Bishops’ Conferences of Europe (CCEE).
He spent the week of July 7–15 at Przemyśl, Poland, nine kilometres from the western border of Ukraine, for the synod of bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
There are now about 51 bishops in the synod of the sui iuris Eastern Catholic Church of the Byzantine Rite. They provide pastoral care all throughout the world, especially in the United States and Ukraine.
Grušas spoke to the crowd in his capacity as CCEE president.
“The battle that rages in Ukraine reminds us of the truth which we profess, that the reality that surrounds us is both visible and invisible,” he said. “It is so closely intertwined that we cannot always clearly separate these two realities.”
The archbishop said: “The physical reality of the war is clearly seen, though it too tries to keep its atrocities and crimes hidden. Our moral teaching reminds us that each person and nation has the right of self-defense and there is a duty that in the sight of naked aggression, the world community must come to the aid of its neighbor under attack.”
On the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross on September 14, according to Grušas, the CCEE has called the bishops of Europe to pray for peace in Ukraine before the Blessed Sacrament.
“We remain united in prayer. The Catholic Church of Europe remembers Ukraine in its prayers,” he said.