(OSV News) — A Ukrainian nun serving in a city on the front lines met with Pope Leo XIV during a private audience with members of a papal society, handing him images of two Ukrainian soldiers in captivity and pleading with him to “end the war.”
Basilian Sister Lucia Murashko was among those in a delegation of board members from the Catholic Extension Society. The group, led by the organization’s chancellor, Cardinal Blaise J. Cupich of Chicago, met with the pope May 18.
Founded in 1905, the Chicago-based nonprofit and papal society organizes support for some 1 in 5 U.S. faithful whose Catholic communities are in the nation’s poorest regions, including its offshore territories.
Meeting with Pope Leo
The opportunity to meet Pope Leo brought tears to Sister Lucia’s eyes.
“While we were waiting for him, I was crying,” she told OSV News afterward. “I was so touched by the event.”
During the May 18 audience, Pope Leo particularly commended the society’s work in Puerto Rico and Cuba, saying Catholic Extension’s support in both places was “a beautiful expression of the universality of the Church.”
He also encouraged the society to continue in the pastoral care it offered to the disadvantaged and to “the many immigrant families in the United States.”
While its outreach centers on the U.S. and surrounding areas, the society bestowed its 2023-2024 Lumen Christi award — its highest honor — on the Basilian Sisters, who also have a U.S. province, for their global ministry to Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced in Ukraine amid Russia’s war on that nation.
The conflict continues attacks launched in 2014 and has been classified as a genocide in multiple joint reports by the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and the Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights.
Sister Lucia, along with Basilian Sisters Yelysaveta Varnitska and Bernadette Dvernytska, serves in the southeast Ukraine city of Zaporizhzhia, which lies within some 12 miles of the war’s front line.
When she came to Rome, Sister Lucia brought with her several gifts for Pope Leo.
One was an icon painted by Sister Bernadette, depicting the faces of Jesus and Mary bent toward each other in sorrow, their eyes closed in mourning as Christ, crowned with thorns, suffers on the cross. Mary’s veil is blue and gold, the colors of the Ukrainian flag.
The icon was wrapped in a rushnyk, a traditional Ukrainian embroidered cloth used for both ritual and decorative purposes.
The cloth Sister Lucia presented to the pope was simple, without elaborate design, “because Ukraine is not in a situation” that admits of luxury, she said.
Stories of soldiers
Sister Lucia also brought pictures of two Ukrainian soldiers now in Russian captivity, given to her by a woman named Oksana, who lost her husband and son to the war, and who now assists the Basilians in their work.
“She said, “Please give these to the pope. Let him know that we are waiting for these two boys,'” Sister Lucia recalled.
Both soldiers have children — one of whom has never seen the twins his wife gave birth to after he was captured, she said.
Pope Leo “was very attentive to what I said,” Sister Lucia told OSV News. He was really present.”
Along with the gifts, Sister Lucia brought the prayers and pleas of those she serves in Ukraine.
“They said, ‘Please tell him about our life, how we struggle here, and how we need his help,'” said Sister Lucia, adding that petitioners affirmed they “would not surrender” to Russian occupation, which has seen the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church banned and brutalized under Russian forces.
As she travels home, Sister Lucia — who previously issued an open invitation for Pope Leo to visit Ukraine — said the inspiration she received from her papal encounter will be nurtured by the courageous witness of those she serves.
‘Spiritual retreat’
One Ukrainian soldier has provided what she called a “spiritual retreat” for the soul, since he bears no malice to the Russian soldiers who tortured and held him captive for nine months before his release in a prisoner exchange.
“I asked him how he lived through all that experience, and he said, ‘I prayed and God protected me. And he helped me to survive,'” said Sister Lucia.
The soldier has “a pure, pure soul” that was “cleansed” by his immense suffering, she said.
“He doesn’t have any anger for them (his Russian torturers). He does not curse anyone. He understands,” said Sister Lucia. “He even says that there are good people among them, and many have to behave as they do because they are forced to do that. He understands them and he doesn’t have any anger or hatred in his heart.”
That witness, along with her papal audience, will sustain her as Russia continues to unleash daily attacks on Ukraine, with Sister Lucia telling OSV News earlier in May, “We are bombed every day.”
Now, “the blessing from the pope gives us hope and strength to continue,” said Sister Lucia.
Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.
