Donbas Catholics: At Risk of Extinction

The Greek Catholic Church is Ukraine's third largest religious denomination, accounting for 7% of the population and mainly concentrated in the west of the country.

Persecuted by Stalin since 1945 and made official again in the 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, this Eastern Church reunited with Rome has condemned in the strongest terms the “special military operation” launched by the Russian Federation in 2022, while striving to maintain a relationship with the “Orthodox” communities undermined by divisions.

A balancing act that puts Catholics living in the largely Russian-controlled Donbas region on the front lines: “We have already lost more than half our parishes, and with the advance of the Russian army, dozens of other churches have recently been evacuated,” Bishop Maksym Ryabukha confides to Giacomo Gambassi for Avvenire on October 28, 2024.

Interviewed by the newspaper run by the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), the new Archiepiscopal Exarch of Donets’k—equivalent to a residential bishop, the prelate was appointed by the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church on October 17, 2024—Bishop Ryabukha describes the daily life of the faithful in a diocese cut off by the front line and largely controlled by Moscow.

The Exarch of Donets’k describes a tense situation in the Catholic villages that are under bombardment: “There are no sacred furnishings left, no furniture, no benches in the churches of Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad and Kostiantynivka, three places toward which the Kremlin battalions are heading in an attempt to complete the conquest of Donets’k oblast,” he explains.

The clergy are not abandoning the faithful, many of whom have chosen the solution of exodus: “Our priests remain close to the population and visit refugees who have left their homes.” Bishop Ryabukha can no longer set foot in more than fifty percent of the occupied exarchate.

On the scene, the Greek Catholic Church is being made to pay dearly for its support for the Ukrainian power, which the Russian-speaking majority see as treachery: in the territories that have chosen Russia, the Church in communion with Rome has been banned.

“Those who openly say they are Catholics disappear: some are shot; others are imprisoned. You don't have the right to profess your faith freely. Our faithful repeat: 'We resist, but it's like being locked up in a prison,'” the Exarch of Donets’k reveals.

Little consolation for the prelate, two of his priests—Fathers Bohdan Geleta and Ivan Levytskyi—were released thanks to mediation by the Holy See after spending more than a year and a half behind bars, accused of hiding weapons, a charge they have always denied.

“Their account of their captivity shows how the power of prayer was a vital support for them in resisting the inhumanity they experienced in Russian jails,” Bishop Ryabukha emphasizes.

For several weeks now, Ukrainian forces have been struggling in the east of the country, facing more numerous and better-armed Russian soldiers. On October 27, Moscow claimed a new advance in the Donets’k region.

For Kyiv, which had hoped to divert Russian troops away from its territory by launching a surprise offensive in the Russian region of Kursk at the beginning of August, the situation is disillusioned as winter sets in.

Lucid, Bishop Ryabukha sums up the situation: “We know that the war is going to end. But we want it to happen as soon as possible, and with a peace that is under the sign of justice.”