“Don't be a hero”, already very clear Pedro Zafra, a 31-year-old young man from Cordoba who lives in kyiv with his priests and blessed veins that he has welcomed in the parish since the beginning of the war.
“I'm not a hero —he repeats—, I couldn't handle this situation by myself. It is God who gives me strength through prayer and the sacraments", Pedro admits that since the beginning of the war "there are times when I fall a little into anguish, into the nonsense of not listening to the human reason for what it is happening, but now I have found much more meaning in prayer and the sacraments, which give me the grace not to run away and to persevere with those who are changing».
Pedro belongs to the Neocatechumenal Way and came to Kyiv in 2011 to train in his seminary. He was ordained last June and the parish of the Assumption of the Virgin, to the east of the city, is his first assignment. The first few months were the normal ones for a Massacantano: celebration of the sacraments, meetings with the altar boys, catechesis with the faithful. The usual life of any parish as shown on his Facebook page.
But on February 24, the Russian invasion of the country completely changed his day to day. For now, the parish became a reception center. More than twenty parishioners searched the building for the security and protection that they did not find at home. "Now they live here, with us, in the basement of the parish, which is a more protected place," Zafra explained.
"We have several elderly people in wheelchairs, families with their young children and teenagers, and some young missionaries," he explained. "They have left their homes and live here because they feel safer and, in addition, living it in community helps us a lot to cope with the situation."
Their daily life is together with this improvised community that has been born from the conflict. “We get up at half past seven, pray together and have breakfast,” explained Pedro. Afterwards, each one dedicates the morning to different tasks. Pedro usually "visits the sick and elderly who cannot leave their homes, to bring them communion and what they may need."
humanitarian aid
The parish acts as a small logistics center. There are the facilities of Radio Maria, which continues with its programming and also of a local Catholic television that has had to suspend its broadcasts. "We have enabled a large room to organize and distribute all the humanitarian aid that comes to us," explained the young priest. "Every day many parishioners and even non-believers come to ask for material and also financial help."
Contrary to what it might seem, Kyiv is experiencing a tense calm, a “normality in quotes”, as Pedro defines it. Part of the inhabitants have fled to the west of the country or abroad and, of those that remain, most have had to leave their jobs.
Even so, it maintains basic services. "Supermarkets, pharmacies and gasoline remained open, only small businesses have closed," he explained. “We go out into the street normally, if there are no alarms or curfew. During the day we have heard explosions, but they were not close, ”he adds.
Pedro Zafra, on the right, along with other priests of the parish and some parishioners, after a wedding celebration on March 12 – ABC
Parish life also develops with this “normality”. "We have had to advance the time of mass so that the faithful have time to return home before curfew," he explained. He also broadcasts it live on YouTube to lose sight of it. That yes, in some moments with greater risk of bombing they have had to move the celebration of the mass and the eucharistic adoration to the basements.
Otherwise, life goes on. In summer my “we have celebrated three weddings and two first communions”. He included "last Sunday we saw how the people who came to mass increased." “People come looking for an answer to suffering,” she explained. "Before they had their job, their life project and now, all that has disappeared, they no longer have any security and they seek an answer in God".
“They are changing a lot,” he says of his parishioners. “There is a lot of tension, concern for safety, for life itself. The uncertainty created by not knowing what is going to happen, living day to day. We don't know if we're going to live tomorrow or not." To this is added the fact that "many families have been divided, the mother and children have left the country and the husbands are still here."
Peter too was tempted to leave Kyiv at the beginning of the war. “It was an internal combat”, our account. But a gospel text in a moment of prayer gave him the key. "He talked about the mission and the support of God's grace to carry it forward," he explained. And I heard that he should stay.
