Five days of walking, from Fastiv, in the Kyiv region, to reach Berdychiv, in the Zhytomyr oblast, south-west of the capital. A journey of about 100 kilometres, with the wooden cross passed from shoulder to shoulder, the rosary in hand, the fatigue from the heat but the spirits full of faith, in Ukraine at war, to experience as tradition every year in mid-July one of the most sacred and heartfelt festivals of Ukrainian Catholics of the Latin rite, the celebration in the Sanctuary of Our Lady of the Holy Scapular of Berdychiv – complex which includes the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites – at the end of the annual national pilgrimage. A spiritual appointment that the war has not cancelled.
Along the road that crosses the expanses of the Ukrainian countryside, the pilgrims sang and prayed together. Everyone brought their own suffering, but also hope which, after more than four and a half years of war, continues to be alive. «Although I have been attending church and going to mass for more than 15 years, this was my first pilgrimage. I’ve wanted to do it for a long time and I finally succeeded,” she says Anastasia Haievska33 years old in a few days, married and mother of two children, left with the group of the San Martino Foundation of Fastiv.
«I walked this path with only one intention: gratitude. I didn’t ask God for anything else. I simply wanted to say “thank you”. In addition to the war that has been going on for years, my family has gone through a very difficult year on a personal level: my mother had cancer, there were many moments of uncertainty, fear, tiredness, tears. But we overcame them. My mother is better now, the tumor is in remission. And today I thank Our Lady for accompanying and protecting us. The pilgrimage was exactly as I hoped. Of course there is physical fatigue, one day we walked 35 km, but the pilgrimage takes you into a completely different reality, it allows you to look at your life from a new perspective, it allows you to understand how important it is to be grateful every single day. As we walked and prayed I cried. And when we arrived at the Sanctuary, tears came to my eyes again, of joy and gratitude.”
Around three thousand people, families, young people, children, but also many elderly people, lay people and religious people, arriving from various regions of Ukraine, crowded the large esplanade in front of the Sanctuary to participate in the mass which, for the first time since the large-scale war broke out in 2022, took place outdoors. This year, the celebration had a special meaning, because it marked 35 years since the structures of the Latin Rite Catholic Church were reopened in Ukraine, after the fall of the Soviet Union.
«We went from Fastiv to Berdychiv to ask the Virgin Mary to intercede for us because we seek a just peace for our country, for all our defenders, for the soldiers, the prisoners of war, the missing”, he reflects father Mykahilo RomanivDominican, director of the San Martino Foundation, leading the group of pilgrims. “We have entrusted our activities, our school, our services, the social kitchen that we have created in Kherson, a city on the southern front, to the Mother of God.” Overlooking the Dnipro River, Kherson is an incessant target of Russian drones, which depart day and night from the other bank of the river. Before the pilgrimage, the San Martino Foundation promoted a fundraiser to purchase fire extinguishers for the families who remained living in Kherson, needed by residents to put out fires when their homes are hit by attacks. “On pilgrimage with us”, adds Father Mykhailo, “for the first time there was also Father Maksym Padlyevsky, parish priest of the only Latin Rite Catholic church in Kherson, a special sign of friendship and unity”.
Celebrating mass at the Berdychiv Shrine on Sunday 19 July was Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Vatican Secretary for Relations with States and International Organizations, sent by Pope Leo to Ukraine for a “pastoral and diplomatic” mission. In front of the crowd of faithful, Monsignor Gallagher made his plea to Our Lady of Mount Carmel that God grant the Ukrainians the gift of peace and justice. The Russian raids did not even spare the visit of Gallagher, who was in the capital: on the night before the celebration at the Shrine, Kyiv was once again the target of intense missile raids.
But the Catholic Church does not give up its own humanitarian diplomacy mission, with the aim of helping to rebuild trust between the parties: the archbishop sent by Leone is visiting for six days (immediately after the mission of the president of the CEI, Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, who among other things visited a detention center for prisoners of the Russian army): a trip to bring the Pope’s closeness and incessant prayer for the Ukrainian population and also to meet various state authorities.
Today, on the last day of the mission, Gallagher met President Zelensky and the interim Foreign Minister in the capital. AND paid homage to the memorial of the victims of the revolution renamed Euromaidan, which broke out between 2013 and 2014 with large pro-European protests concentrated in maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), the heart of Kyiv, against the government of the former pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was later forced to resign. In recent days, Gallagher also visited the community of Dominican friars in Kyiv, led by the Polish Father Jaroslaw Krawiec, which was recently damaged by one of the massive Russian raids on the capital.
