At a panel discussion, “Ukraine: An Inside Perspective,” held April 7 at The Catholic University of America, one of the speakers noted how that topic tied into Lent and Holy Week. The discussion was held as Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine was entering its seventh week and had left thousands of people killed on both sides, with mounting civilian casualties and large sections of several cities reduced to rubble by Russian bombings and artillery.
“We’re here in Lent, coming up on Holy Week, so we’re really in this moment between suffering and hope, and that’s where we are in the war in Ukraine as well as in our response to it,” said Maryann Cusimano Love, an associate professor of international relations in CUA’s Department of Politics who was one of the panelists. The discussion was sponsored by the university’s School of Theology and Religious Studies and its Office of Campus Ministry.
She was joined on the panel by Father Mark Morozowich, a Ukrainian Catholic priest who serves as the dean of Catholic University’s School of Theology and Religious Studies; Father Peter Galadza, a Ukrainian Catholic priest from Canada who is a visiting professor teaching liturgy at Catholic University; and Lydia Korostelova, a Ukrainian native and student at CUA’s Columbus School of Law, who described how the war had impacted her hometown of Huliaipole in eastern Ukraine and her family. (See related story.)
Cusimano Love, who spoke via an online connection, teaches peace studies at Catholic University. She said several myths are connected to peace building, including that it is something that only begins after a war, and that it is just done by governments.
The reality of peace building, she said, is that it must commence during the war, and “we all have a role to play. We all have things we can do that will help set the table to build a more sustainable, just peace for Ukraine.”
The educator teaches international relations courses at Catholic University and the Pentagon and has worked with the State Department and has advised the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on foreign policy. She noted how CUA students have been engaged in a solidarity network with students at the Catholic University of Ukraine in Lviv, connecting with them on Zoom and supporting their relief efforts.
“The students there (in Ukraine) have been rallying around how to respond and be a resource to others during this war,” she said.
The Catholic University of Ukraine has become a hub for humanitarian assistance, Cusimano Love said, noting that the university has been collecting donations, shipping out tons of food, assisting emergency medical teams and providing shelter to displaced families and children.
Cusimano Love, who has a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, said the building blocks toward just peace include fostering participation, restoration, right relationships, reconciliation and sustainability.
She pointed out how the Catholic University of Ukraine, which had pivoted to virtual classes during the pandemic, is continuing to teach its students during the war, both in-person and online. In addition, journalism students and faculty members there are recording stories of how people have been impacted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Truth telling is a really important part of reconciliation,” she said.
Transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy will hasten peace in Ukraine, she said, noting how some Western nations that have been supplying military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine are continuing to purchase oil from Russia, which helps prop up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Concluding her presentation, Cusimano Love said, “All wars end, and whether they end well or badly depends on us and what we do to build a better peace.”
In his talk, Father Galadza pointed out several ironies connected to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“In 1994, Ukrainians voluntarily gave up their entire nuclear arsenal, and the Russian government at the time signed a document pledging to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” he said.
Twenty years later in 2014, Russia occupied and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and began providing military assistance to Russian separatists fighting in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. Then on Feb. 24, Russia launched its most recent invasion of Ukraine.
Father Galadza said that while “Ukraine has shown itself to be a model of cultural and ethnic pluralism,” Putin has framed the invasion as an effort to “protect” ethnic Russians in Ukraine, and the war has received the support of the Russian Orthodox Church. The priest pointed out how changing borders on the basis of ethnicity helped spark World War II.
He also noted the “absurdity of Moscow’s de-Nazification program” against Ukraine that it has promoted in the state-controlled Russian media.
“The head of the allegedly ‘Nazi’ government in Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky, is a Jew and lost many of his own relatives in the Holocaust,” Father Galadza said.
Another panelist, Father Morozowich, emphasized that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine didn’t begin in February. “The war there has been going on since 2014, and over 20,000 people have lost their lives” in Ukraine since then, he said.
Father Morozowich pointed out that while Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has backed the invasion and has framed it as “saving people from the ills of the West,” Russia has one of the world’s highest abortion rates, has no freedom of speech and has been arresting thousands of Russians protesting against the war.
“It really is an ideological war fought against a way of living,” he said, agreeing with Father Galadza that Ukraine not only prizes its freedom, but has been a country where people of different cultures, faiths and ethnicities have lived together. He added, “…This idea of exchange, of freedom is what Putin is fighting against… This is about domination.”
The Catholic University dean also noted how in 1945, Soviet authorities arrested Ukrainian Catholic bishops, and Ukrainian Catholics were “dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night,” and one year later, that church was outlawed there. Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, harkening an era of religious freedom there for the Ukrainian Catholic Church after the persecution its adherents had experienced in earlier decades.
Concluding his presentation, Father Morozowich said, “We’re in this period of Lent. We’ve been meditating on the cross. Jesus Christ was crucified, the Son of God was killed. His Father did not spite the people who killed him, because it was through the cross that Jesus brings about salvation and brings about new life.”
He added, “This masquerading of purification (by Russia) is simply antithetical to the cross of Jesus Christ.”
In a question and answer session, Cusimano Love said a key factor in Putin’s military intervention in Ukraine that began in 2014 was that an economically developed democracy with closer ties to Europe on Russia’s border was regarded as a threat to his regime.
Asked about the legacy of faith in Ukraine, Father Galadza noted the Ukrainian Catholic University has engaged in an oral history project with survivors of the catacombs church there, including some Ukrainian Catholics who spent years in the Gulag, and some who had to gather in forests or basements at night to celebrate the Eucharist.
“These people walk around without resentment, without desiring ill for anyone. Their attitude is, ‘We look forward. Jesus Christ has saved us from this hellish reality, and we give thanks every day to the Lord for these opportunities,’” he said, expressing admiration for their faith. “…There’s no doubt (that) faith in our Lord has enabled these people to move on. Only the devil wins when we fill ourselves with hatred and despair.”
Responding to another question, Cusimano Love said that after the fall of communism, Putin was among leaders who, to retain power, “reinvented themselves as nationalists with a religious cloak.” She noted that after Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, the international response has been united in solidarity and outrage, debating whether Russia’s actions amount to genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity.
The world’s worst genocides, like that which happened with Hitler in World War II and in Rwanda in 1994, were fought in an attempt for countries to have a particular ethnic, linguistic, religious or cultural group in power, Cusimano Love said, adding that “is an absolutely failed prospect” now during a time of rapid globalization.
Father Morozowich said that as the people of Ukraine endure their current suffering, there are signs of hope, and he pointed to how Ukrainians have been selflessly assisting refugees and displaced persons, showing an outpouring of love, and how those people from different backgrounds are coming together, having a meeting of minds and are building bridges of understanding as they face the same challenges in their war-torn country.
“In the midst of this destruction, this love of Christ is blooming. In the midst of inhumanity, humanity is winning,” he said.
The gathering at Catholic University ended with panelists and audience members reciting together a prayer for peace in Ukraine, also praying that the people of Russia will demand peace, and that people in the United States can help foster peacemaking in the world.
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