Catholic and other religious leaders are condemning a Palm Sunday attack by Russia on a Ukrainian city that killed 34 – including two children – and injured 119. Source: OSV News.
“When we celebrate the feast of life, the enemy wishes to inflict its feast of death on us,” Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said in a statement on Sunday.
Two ballistic missiles launched by Russia earlier that same day struck the centre of Sumy, a city in northeastern Ukraine located 24kms from the Russian border. The second missile was “likely packed with fragmentation elements” and “exploded in midair to inflict maximum damage on people in the city streets”, Serhii Kryvosheienko, of the Sumy Military Administration, wrote in a post on the Telegram social media platform.
He said the second strike “caused most of the casualties”.
“This is nothing but another crime against humanity,” Major Archbishop Shevchuk said.
The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations (UCCRO), the largest organisation of religious leaders in Ukraine, also condemned the strikes, which took place amid both the Jewish holiday of Passover and the Christian observance of Holy Week.
“Despite the festal period associated with the celebration of the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter, the Russian state continues to terrorise Ukrainian cities and villages day and night with drone and missile attacks, as well as shelling,” said the council in a statement.
“Such actions demonstrate that nothing is sacred for the state that declares itself to be ‘Holy Rus’,” referencing a longstanding theological and political concept that positions Russia as a defender of traditional Christian values.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin and Patriarich Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, have invoked the concept to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which continues attacks launched in 2014, and which has been declared a genocide in two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.
UCCRO said in its statement that Russia’s Palm Sunday strike showed “basic respect for the value of human life is absent, not to mention respect for the holidays of Christianity and Judaism.”
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‘Nothing is sacred’: Religious leaders condemn Russia’s Palm Sunday attack on Ukraine (By Gina Christian, OSV News)
