As Russia’s war on Ukraine approaches its 11th year, thousands of Ukrainians from all over the world gathered at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in France to pray for peace in their homeland and throughout the world.
The annual All-Ukrainian Prayer took place at the Marian shrine Oct. 11 to 13, according to the Kyiv-based press office of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which interviewed several pilgrims on a first-name-only basis.
Pilgrims traveled to Lourdes from Ukraine as well as from the Western countries to which at least 6.2 million Ukrainians have fled following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, which continued attacks launched in 2014.
Russia’s aggression, which has also resulted in the forced deportation of well over 19,500 Ukrainian children to Russia and Belarus, has been declared a genocide in two joint reports from the New Lines Institute and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights.
Among those praying for peace at the Lourdes shrine were Andriy and Iryna, a couple who fled to Germany from their home in the now-destroyed eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut, where some of the war’s fiercest clashes have been waged.
“We pray for Ukraine, our state, soldiers, suffering people,” the couple told the UGCC press office. “We are looking for a connection with God and the Ukrainian people, because first of all we are Ukrainians. “
Pilgrims Oksana and Natalia described the UGCC’s church in Lourdes, the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God, as “home-like.” Consecrated in 1982, the church is the only Eastern Catholic house of worship at Lourdes, and symbolizes the oneness of the global Ukrainian community, which has sustained multiple displacements over time due to the Second World War, Soviet repression and, most recently, post-Soviet Russian aggression under Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The church’s frescoes, designed by the late Polish artist and iconographer Jerzy Nowosielski (who was of Ukrainian origin), include a sanctuary image of the Oranta – the Mother of God at prayer, her hands extended to heaven.
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