Auxiliary Bishop of Lviv: Drone attacks on Caritas warehouse strike the most needy

The Auxiliary Bishop of Lviv (Lemberg), Bishop Edward Kawa, has described the drone attacks on the west Ukrainian city of Lviv, in the early hours of 19 September, as "an attack on the poorest and most needy.”

During this attack, a warehouse containing donations to the charity “Caritas-Spes” was destroyed. “All the relief goods which were stored there should have gone to Kharkiv and Pavlograd in the following days”, said the bishop, speaking to the international charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

Three hundred tonnes of relief goods sent by the Vatican and the Polish operation " Packages for Ukraine – the contents of 15 lorries – had been stored there, including food, shoes and winter clothing. More than 100 emergency generators for dealing with power and heating failures were also destroyed.

A fragment of a drone found in a room of the warehouse had the words “NO BROTHERS” written on it in Russian, said the bishop.

The only consoling news, according to Bishop Kawa, is that four lorries had left the warehouse two days earlier to take relief goods to Zaporizhzhia. The auxiliary bishop asks ACN’s benefactors not to forget Ukraine. “Winter is coming, and the war is not over. God bless you.”

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine ACN has supported the local Catholic Church of both rites with more than 350 projects – in all, more than 24 million AUD. Most of the relief projects support the local Church in its work with the most needy and enable priests, religious sisters and lay people to attend to the spiritual and physical needs of the local population.

To make an offering to the Church in Ukraine visit www.aidtochurch.org/ukraine

- By Sina Hartert

Featured Image: Bishop Edward Kawa, OFM, under the statue of John Paul II in the Bryukhovichi seminary, Lviv, during the war in the country. © Ismael Martínez Sánchez / ACN.

The Mass is the most effective prayer that could be said on behalf of those who have died. ACN can arrange recurring annual Masses for your dearly departed loved ones.