“War is over, should you want it”. So sang John Lennon in 1971. Fast forward to 2025 and war remains to be not over, with armed conflicts still raging internationally. Ukraine, Gaza, the DRC, Sudan and a spread of other smaller wars remain a reality.
On Monday night, a Russian attack involving 600 drones and 30 missiles, reportedly attempted to knock out Ukrainian energy infrastructure. At least three people were killed within the attack, one among whom was a four-year-old girl.
Christians within the country are said to be praying for “God to be present” this Christmas.
One Catholic priest ministering to the small town of Bila Tserkva has spoken of the realities of living in a state of war.
Father Lucas Perozzi, who got here from his native Brazil to minister in Ukraine 22 years ago, told Aid to the Church in Need, “We hope that God will probably be present in these holidays, that he’ll make himself present to us, even when the war doesn’t end.
“Even when the war does end, problems will remain, we can have the economic hardship and anarchy that is available in the aftermath of conflict.”
The war, he said, had made people face the realities of death and hardship each day.
“Every day we hear of soldiers killed within the war, and on daily basis there may be a burial nearby. We face death on daily basis. We have blackouts on daily basis. Sometimes we have fun Mass by candlelight or a battery powered flashlight when it’s charged.
“The electricity is turned off at 4am and only turned back on again at around 5 pm. Sometimes we’ve electricity, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we’ve water, then we don’t. Sometimes we’ve food, other times we go hungry.
“Prices are rising, and folks don’t know what to do. It is a miracle that folks manage to live in any respect, especially the refugees from the east who live here now, I don’t know the way they even survive.”
As well as current suffering, Father Lucas Perozzi said that his parishioners still needed to cope with the issues of past injustices.
The Catholics of Bila Tserkva worship in a constructing that was taken from them a long time ago by the state in the times of the USSR.
“Now we’ve to pay rent to hope within the church that was stolen from us. And every yr we’ve to renew an agreement with the Ministry for Culture.”
Despite his a few years in Ukraine, Father Lucas Perozzi only recently moved to the relatively distant community in Bila Tserkva.
“On my first day there was a missile attack, a giant one. And the foremost difference to Kyiv was that while within the capital they was mostly intercepted, Bila Tserkva doesn’t have the identical air defence systems, so that they all hit their targets.
“A four-story constructing collapsed, two people were killed and eight wounded, and several other other houses were damaged.”
Despite the hardships and suffering, the priest said that he has never overpassed why he remained, “All I actually wish for is for God to look within the lifetime of everybody I actually have been sent to. I pray for them on daily basis, for my parishioners, that God is likely to be born unto each of them, because our life here may be very fragile.”
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