As millions of refugees fled the war in Ukraine this year, a Catholic family of eight decided to take in a refugee family.
Pietro and Erika Chiriaco have six children and live in Rome. During family prayer time, the couple emphasized to their children that welcoming a refugee family would be “like welcoming Jesus.”
This is how Iryna and Sofia, a Kyiv mother and her 17-year-old daughter, came to live with the Chiriaco family in Rome’s southern suburbs.
The family escaped Kiev ten days after Russia invaded 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.
Iryna and Sofia recounted their story with Pope Francis on the stage of the World Meeting of Families, which is taking place in Rome from June 22 to June 26.
The Chiriacos stated that they chose to host Ukrainian refugees out of thankfulness to God. Erika Chiriaco noted that the Ukrainian mother and daughter’s presence in their home has been a “blessing from heaven.”
Pope Francis expressed gratitude to the family for their generosity and for exemplifying 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 went on to say that a family is where a person “experiences what it is to be welcomed.”
He stated that this can be witnessed when a family embraces the life of a disabled child, a relative confronting problems, or an elderly person in need of care.
The organizers of the 10th World Meeting of Families are urging families to digitally join in this Catholic tradition begun by St. John Paul II by tuning in to media broadcasts and live streams of speeches and catecheses.
At the World Meeting of Families, Pope Francis commended Iryna and Sofia for giving their witness to faith in the face of human brutality.
“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.”