The Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations shared insights with a European Consultation on just peace held in Warsaw, Poland from 9-11 December.
Rev. Anatolyi Raychynets, Vice-Chairman of the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organisations, and Deputy General Secretary of the Ukrainian Bible Society, reflected on how Ukrainian churches perceive the concept of just peace.
“For over a thousand days, our people have been courageously defending their homeland, their homes, and the right to life,” he said. “Every day is a miracle!”
The consultation, part of the Conference of European Churches’ Pathways to Peace initiative, is being held in cooperation with the Polish Ecumenical Council.
“The fact that we are here with you today is a miracle!” said Raychynets. “Every day of struggle is given at a very high price.”
This three-day consultation is being guided by the biblical verse, “Let justice roll down like water and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream,” Amos 5:24.
Raychynets explained how, every morning, Ukrainian people have been starting each day with a moment of silence. “Every morning at 9 a.m. we stop, fall silent, and prayerfully think of the pain of the losses that are increasing,” he said. “Our brothers and sisters gave the most precious thing they had – their own lives – so that we and you could live.”
Raychynets, who serves as a volunteer chaplain, was present at the funeral of a solider, whose young son was about the same age as Raychynets’ son. “And when the coffin was lowered, this boy jumped into the grave, to his father,” recalled Raychynets. “He cried bitterly and could not his dearest dad let go. It is extremely painful.”
He also noted some sobering statistics: More than 12 million people have lost their homes and became internally displaced persons. More than 8 million families have been separated for over 1,000 days. “Husbands have stayed to defend their homes, while wives and children have become refugees in different countries of the world,” said Raychynets. “I will never forget the concentration of pain, tears, and fear of the unknown that I felt at the train station in Kyiv, where we were putting women with children and the elderly on evacuation trains that, saving millions of lives, were heading to the west of our country.”
Raychynets described seeing the “Russian world” come to the territories of Ukraine. “Church buildings taken for the needs of the Russian army, a ban on holding church worships, killed clergy, tortures,” he said. “Therefore, we, as ministers of the church, ask for something that is not typical for pastors – we ask to help Ukraine with weapons and everything necessary so that the defense forces of Ukraine can protect the lives of children, women, and all people, because they came to kill us.”
That, Raychynets said, is what just peace means to him. “Exactly a just peace,” he concluded. “When evil is punished and justice is restored.”
In addition to Rev. Anatolyi Raychynets, the Ukrainian delegation also included Bishop Stanislav Nosov, President, Ukrainian Union Conference Seventh-day Adventist Church and Dr Serhii Shumylo, Institute for Religious Freedom, Kyiv.
