Pope Francis reads aloud a letter sent to him by a Ukrainian student to mark the 1,000th day of the war in the country. “When you speak of our thousand days of suffering,” the student urges, “speak of our thousand days of love, too.”
By Joseph Tulloch
This week’s General Audience, held on Wednesday, November 20, took place one day after the 1,000-day of the war in Ukraine.
Toward the end of the audience—at which Ukrainian First Lady Olena Zelenska, wife of President Volodymyr Zelensky, was in attendance—Pope Francis took a moment to reflect on the tragic milestone, which he called a “shameful disaster for all humanity.”
The scale of the tragedy, the Pope stressed, should not dissuade us from “standing alongside the martyred Ukrainian people” and working for peace, so that “weapons might give way to dialogue and combat to encounter.”
Pope Francis meets with Olena Zelenska at the General Audience
The letter
The Pope then noted that, two days earlier, he had received a letter from a Ukrainian university student on the subject of the 1,000-day anniversary. He read aloud from the letter:
“Father,
When, on Wednesday, you remember my country and are able to speak to the whole world on the thousandth day of this terrible war, I ask you not to speak only of our suffering but also of our faith. Although it is imperfect, that does not diminish its value, because it paints, with painful strokes, a portrait of the Resurrected Christ.
There have been too many deaths in my life recently. It is difficult to live in a city where a missile kills and wounds dozens of civilians, and you are witness to so many tears. I would have liked to flee, would have liked to go back to being a child in my mother’s arms, would have liked to remain in silence and in love, but I thank God because, through this pain, I am learning greater love. Pain is not only a road to anger and despair; if based on faith, it is a good teacher of love.
Father, if pain makes us suffer, it is because we love, and so, when you speak of our pain, when you remember our thousand days of suffering, speak of our thousand days of love, too, because only love, faith, and hope give a real meaning to our wounds.”
