Crying women, soldiers with emotional and physical wounds, families destroyed by uncertainty…Fr Anton Lässer and Magda Kaczmarek from ACN report on these and other stories, which make visible the deep wounds of the conflict in Ukraine.
The scars of the war in Ukraine are not only visible on bodies; they are also reflected in the faces of those who are experiencing it. In March 2025, Fr Anton Lässer, Ecclesiastical Assistant of Aid to the Church in Need International (ACN), and Magda Kaczmarek, ACN’s Head of European Projects, travelled to Ukraine, a country still marked by the horror of a war which has already lasted three years. In each town and village on their journey, they heard the accounts of those who have lost everything and nevertheless keep their faith: voices, which oscillate between pain and hope.
The pain of mothers: “My son played here. Now he is buried here.”
One of the most vivid scenes for Magda Kaczmarek was the meeting with a group of women. “Everyone had lost someone: a son, a husband or both. One of them held a piece of her son’s military uniform in her hands, which had been found at the front,” remembers Kaczmarek. Fr Anton said that the uncertainty over the survival of a family member was often the worst thing for these women: “A woman with small children did not learn until eight months after the last contact with her husband, through a DNA test, that he had died at the front. The certainty, she said, was easier to bear than the exhausting months before.”
At the military cemetery in Lviv, close to the Polish border, Fr Anton and Magda Kaczmarek, together with the Latin Archbishop Mieczyslaw Mokrzycki, met a crying woman: “She came up to us and asked if we could pray together,” said Fr Anton. The woman sobbed and repeated: “Why, why, why?” This question is asked in many parts of Ukraine. She didn’t even know that her son was at the front until she got a call in which she was told that he had died. Fr Anton invited her to walk with him a little. Magda Kaczmarek explained that when they returned, “her face had changed. She seemed much calmer and somehow more peaceful.” At the same cemetery another mother said to them: “My son played here. Now he is buried here.”
On an earlier visit by ACN, less than a year ago, about a third of the area was covered with graves. Now there are over 1,000 graves and the adjoining property is being prepared for those who will no longer come back alive to Lviv.
Back to the front – or not?
There are, however, many stories which bring hope. In Lviv, Sister Hieronyma from the Albertines found a dishevelled old woman from Kramatorsk, a town in eastern Ukraine in the Donetsk region, who had lost everything and fled to western Ukraine. She had been living for months on the street. Her face was disfigured by suffering. The sister took her into the home which they run, which is supported by ACN. “Today, after several weeks of care and attention, her transformation is almost a miracle. The photos show her before and after, and you can hardly believe it. The sisters have given her back dignity and peace,” says Magda Kaczmarek.
Another moving report concerns a 22-year-old man who was seriously injured by a grenade. An initial life-saving surgical intervention had to take place in the armoured vehicle on the way to the field hospital. After several operations at the hospital, his face was still covered with metal splinters and swollen; he could neither see nor speak. In his anxiety about becoming blind he asked the attending nurse through gestures “to open his eyes”. When he then noticed that he could see something, he began to cry for joy. He still had some operations to come. “When asked how he was, he said to the surprise of his listeners that he could not sleep at night because he was tormented by the question of whether, after his recovery, he was supposed to return to the front. For his family this was a big concern. Such situations can become a worrying and painful endurance test for families,” says Fr Anton.
Challenges for the Church: “We must feed souls”
The challenges for the Church continue. Alongside the financial and material help provided by ACN, Fr Anton emphasises an inner struggle which many people undergo: the battle between Christian values and the feeling of rage that is caused by the suffering. “In this context of the war it is not difficult to understand these feelings. But it is important that people work on them, to overcome revenge and hatred,” he said.
It is not just about rebuilding Ukraine but also about healing people’s spiritual and emotional wounds. For as the woman sobbing at the cemetery in Lviv kept asking: “Why? Why? Why?”, the key is not just to heal the visible scars of war, but also the hidden ones.
Three years after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, ACN has provided more than €25.2 million to support the Catholic Church of both rites in the whole of Ukraine. The projects have changed in nature over the course of the war. There are new and significant challenges. Currently, ACN is deeply involved in promoting various programmes such as a formation in trauma care programme, which has now been undertaken by more than 1,800 priests, sisters and lay people. There are also programmes and therapy groups for orphans, widows and mothers of the fallen. In 2024 alone, ACN helped to set up four therapy centres for spiritual and psychological care.
