Ukrainian Nun Meets Pope Leo XIV, Pleads for End to War

A Ukrainian nun serving on the front lines of the ongoing war met with Pope Leo XIV during a private audience with members of a papal society, presenting images of two Ukrainian soldiers in captivity and pleading for help to end the war. Basilian Sister Lucia Murashko was part of a delegation from the Catholic Extension Society, an organization led by Cardinal Blaise J. Cupich of Chicago. The group met with the pope on May 18, during which he commended the society’s work in Puerto Rico and Cuba, calling it a beautiful expression of the universality of the Church.

The Catholic Extension Society, founded in 1905, focuses on supporting Catholic communities in the nation’s poorest regions, including its offshore territories. The society bestowed its 2023-2024 Lumen Christi award on the Basilian Sisters for their global ministry to Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced persons amid Russia’s war in Ukraine. The conflict, which began in 2014, 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 Murashko, along with Basilian Sisters Yelysaveta Varnitska and Bernadette Dvernytska, serves in Zaporizhzhia, a city in southeast Ukraine located within 12 miles of the war’s front line. When she traveled to Rome, she brought several gifts for Pope Leo XIV, including an icon painted by Sister Bernadette. The icon depicts the faces of Jesus and Mary bent toward each other in sorrow, their eyes closed in mourning as Christ 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. Sister Murashko explained that the cloth was simple, without elaborate design, because Ukraine is not in a situation that admits of luxury. She also brought pictures of two Ukrainian soldiers now in Russian captivity, given to her by a woman named Oksana, who lost family members in the conflict.

The meeting with the pope highlights the ongoing efforts of the Eastern Catholic churches in communion with Rome to advocate for peace and support those affected by the war. Their work reflects a deep commitment to mercy, justice, and the care of the vulnerable, echoing the biblical call to love one’s neighbor as oneself. As Micah 6:8 reminds us, the Lord requires action that is “to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

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