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 11-13 October, according to the Kyiv-based press office of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.
Pilgrims travelled 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, and which has been declared a genocide in two major human rights reports.
Pilgrims Oksana and Natalia, who have taken refuge in Germany, said they had come to Lourdes to “know God and go to Jesus to grow in faith, and (to) ask for intercession for Ukraine.”
The two women, who did not provide their last names, said they planned “to pray for the country, the Ukrainian military, and the conversion of the Ukrainian people.”
During the pilgrimage, 18 members from the “Ukrainian Youth of Christ” group in Guissona, Spain—a Catalan town dubbed “Little Ukraine” for its historic Ukrainian enclave, which grew substantially after Russia’s full-scale invasion—pledged a solemn oath of loyalty to Christ, according to the UGCC’s Eparchy of St Volodymyr the Great in Paris.
Source: The Catolic Weekly
