Father Lucas Perozzi (Photo: Aid to the Church in Need)
“War is over, if you want it”. So sang John Lennon in 1971. Fast forward to 2025 and war is still not over, with armed conflicts still raging across the world. Ukraine, Gaza, the DRC, Sudan and a range 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 in the attack, one of whom was a four-year-old girl.
Christians in 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 came from his native Brazil to minister in Ukraine 22 years ago, told Aid to the Church in Need, “We hope that God will be present in these holidays, that he will make himself present to us, even if the war does not end.
“Even when the war does end, problems will remain, we will have the economic hardship and anarchy that comes in the aftermath of conflict.”
The war, he said, had made people face the realities of death and hardship every single day.
“Every day we hear of soldiers killed in the war, and every day there is a burial nearby. We face death every day. We have blackouts every day. Sometimes we celebrate Mass by candlelight or a battery powered flashlight when it is charged.
“The electricity is turned off at 4am and only turned back on again at around 5 pm. Sometimes we have electricity, sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we have water, then we don’t. Sometimes we have food, other times we go hungry.
“Prices are rising, and people don’t know what to do. It is a miracle that people manage to live at all, especially the refugees from the east who live here now, I don’t know how they even survive.”
As well as current suffering, Father Lucas Perozzi said that his parishioners still had to deal with the problems of past injustices.
The Catholics of Bila Tserkva worship in a building that was taken from them decades ago by the state in the days of the USSR.
“Now we have to pay rent to pray in the church that was stolen from us. And every year we have to renew an agreement with the Ministry for Culture.”
Despite his many years in Ukraine, Father Lucas Perozzi only recently moved to the relatively remote community in Bila Tserkva.
“On my first day there was a missile attack, a big one. And the major difference to Kyiv was that while in the capital they used to be mostly intercepted, Bila Tserkva doesn’t have the same air defence systems, so they all hit their targets.
“A four-story building collapsed, two people were killed and eight wounded, and several other houses were damaged.”
Despite the hardships and suffering, the priest said that he has never lost sight of why he remained, “All I really wish for is for God to appear in the life of each person I have been sent to. I pray for them every day, for my parishioners, that God might be born unto each of them, because our life here is very fragile.”
