Caritas Ukraine president lauds women’s courage amid Ukraine conflict

Refugees anticipate trains at Lviv railway station in western Ukraine. / Ruslan Lytvyn/Shutterstock. Vatican City, Mar eight, 2022 / 11:00 am (CNA). The president of Caritas Ukraine on Tuesday praised the courage and power that ladies have proven in the face of warfare with Russia.“I’d wish to additionally raise up the ladies who ... have courageously taken their youngsters and crossed the border to maintain their youngsters protected. And so that their husbands might feel peace figuring out that their household is somewhere where it's protected,” Tetiana Stawnychy stated on March 8, International Ladies’s Day. “The grueling trip can take anyplace from two to 3 days simply to get to the border, and then to cross the border into the other country,” she defined. “Just this generosity and courage of spirit that we see is actually inspiring.”Stawnychy, who is predicated within the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, spoke at a seminar organized by Caritas Internationalis, a Vatican-based umbrella physique for Catholic aid groups around the globe.Stawnychy stated that her days had been very full since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, so she didn't have a ready presentation. She stated that she would as an alternative converse “from my heart.” “What we see now in Ukraine is a large motion of solidarity and help for people who find themselves fleeing and it includes each women and men,” she stated. “For me, it’s been inspiring to be with our complete Caritas network to answer the needs of the crisis at hand.”“I can say that ladies have definitely been equally on the frontline in making an attempt to answer the disaster at hand,” Stawnychy stated.She explained that her organization had been busy even earlier than the outbreak of conflict, because it prepared contingency plans for the assault.Each women and men have been involved within the preparation, Stawnychy stated, but “it was initiated by ladies, this idea of making an attempt to plan and be ready.”This preparation meant that on Feb. 24, the day the full-scale Russian invasion started, “we had a plan in place and immediately started to serve. There was no pause in our work,” she famous.“And it was once more for me an inspiring second to see how our local administrators and the way the local employees threw themselves into the work of serving others.”The Caritas Ukraine president highlighted the contribution of two of her colleagues, Hannah and Xsenia. “Hannah,” she stated, “led an entire staff of peace-builders that have been working all through the network, and working on constructing dialogue. They have been creating area for individuals to trade.”“And in the present day, Hannah is constant to work on this area. She’s working on placing together groups to be going to the locations the place displaced persons are lodged and to begin working on these questions of helping individuals to course of what’s occurring, helping to start out dialogue, and serving to to resolve any conflicts as they could begin to occur.” Xsenia, she continued, “is a really, I might say, robust lady, who led a large challenge prior to now. And lately she could be very humbly serving us, doing easy issues, simply seeing what must be carried out and then answering these wants.”“In some ways, I feel that that’s the genius typically that we discover in ladies, who are capable of see wants after which out of their heart they reply them in the easiest way that they will.”This genius has additionally been on display, the Caritas Ukraine president stated, in the ladies who've gone to train stations just to see how they are often of assist to the refugees arriving there, or the psychologists displaying up on the places where internally displaced individuals have gathered as they search for security. The need for psychological help is even larger now, she stated, with the second wave of refugees, which is more weak and traumatized after experiencing bombing and shelling. “There’s a larger want to point out that care and that love and to calm individuals down,” she commented.The theme of the March 8 seminar was “Church and Society: Ladies as Builders of Dialogue.” It was co-hosted by Caritas Internationalis and the British Embassy to the Holy See.“Once we speak about dialogue and restoring dialogue, we mentioned additionally the query of human dignity,” Stawnychy stated. “That restoration of human dignity occurs by way of the work of Caritas. It occurs by means of this understanding of seeing the opposite, of seeing the value of the opposite in whatever state of affairs they could find themselves in.” “And it’s a restorative course of. It restores the one that receives and it restores the one that provides.”