The head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk prayed on Thursday at the site of a mass grave in the recently liberated city of Bucha.
Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk described his visit to the site around 15 miles northwest of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in his daily video message on April 8.
“In order to see, yesterday I personally had the opportunity to go to the tragically infamous town of Bucha, which is an open wound on the body of Ukraine,” he said.
“And there, above the open mass grave, seeing the mutilated, breathless bodies, we prayed for their eternal rest. And in that prayer I asked myself, I asked God, ‘God, what does it mean to love You and love one’s neighbor?’”
The mass grave was discovered beside a church after Russian forces abandoned their positions in Bucha, which they had occupied days after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February.
Images of apparently executed civilians in the city’s streets prompted an international outcry. At his Wednesday general audience, Pope Francis deplored “the Bucha massacre,” saying that the victims’ “innocent blood cries out to heaven.”
He added: “But let us love God, Who is the source of life, not death. We ask our loving God to truly feel our oneness with our brothers and sisters, even to learn to love our enemies.”
“To love one’s enemy means to stop his murderous hand, to take away his weapon, not to give him the opportunity to kill. We ask that in the circumstances of hatred and murder of war, that we know how to love God and our neighbor, that we remain human.”