Bishop of Kyiv meets with Secretary of State Rubio

The Ukrainian bishop of Kyiv said he discussed faith and the plight of the Ukrainian people with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a Feb. 4 meeting at the State Department.

“It was a very good meeting, because first of all, I met him as with a brother of faith,” Bishop Vitaliy Kryvytskyi, SDB, of Kyiv–Zhytomyr told EWTN News in an exclusive interview during his visit to the U.S. “I am not a politician,” he said. “The only thing I want to do is give witness of faith.”

The meeting comes ahead of the four-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, in what was an escalation of a conflict that began in 2014.

Kryvytskyi said that Rubio told him he prays for the Ukrainian people every night.

“We also saw that we had something in common,” Kryvytskyi said, noting that Rubio’s family members from Cuba “know what communism is.” He said: “We all went through that difficult period, and we don’t want to go back to it.”

Ahead of the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kryvytskyi said Ukrainians are experiencing electricity blackouts that “are longer than they were before.” In Kyiv, he noted that a lot of buildings lack electricity and heating. “Outside, it is very cold, people are freezing to death in their apartments,” he said.

The bishop described the Catholic Church in Ukraine as being actively engaged on the humanitarian front. “We’re doing everything possible to turn our churches into an oasis, where people can come and just find the most essential things, even to charge a phone, to have a warm cup of coffee, or just to stay warm.” A lot of people come to Ukrainian churches for food as well, he said, because many do not have electricity to cook.

“At the same time,” he said, “we’re here to answer your questions: people that have asked us ‘How long is this going to take?’ and we answer that it is through God that we find the strength and hope to go through this.” For many, he said, it has served as an opportunity to learn to pray for the first time.

In his own prayer life, Kryvytskyi said the war has transformed the way Scripture impacts him. “For example, reading the Psalms on a daily basis, I understood that many times they speak about war [and] it’s like they took on a different color.”

“I found myself the same as the author who wrote the Psalms, and with the same understanding,” he said, adding that he also has begun praying the rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet on a more frequent basis.

“For the faithful to keep their faith during this time of trial is not easy,” he said. “Today, if you look at it from a certain aspect, maybe we’re stronger than we were four years ago.”