Supreme chaplain visits the “hero cities” of Bucha and Irpin during his trip to Ukraine
By Solomiia Karpiv
During his recent visit to Ukraine, Supreme Chaplain Archbishop William Lori toured Irpin and Bucha, two cities that have become symbolic of both the brutality of Russia’s invasion and the resilience of the Ukrainian people.
Russian forces seized Bucha, a town 18 miles (30 km) northwest of Kyiv, in February 2022. After they withdrew about a month later, several hundred civilians, including women and children, were found massacred. A mass grave near St. Andrew the First-Called Church held 119 bodies, and nearly 40 people were killed along Yablunska Street, where Russian soldiers established a headquarters.
On Oct. 19, Archbishop Lori visited the memorials that have been erected at both sites to learn about and pray for the victims.
“It was very moving to go to Bucha, to see where so many innocent civilians lost their lives on this ‘Road of Death,’” the supreme chaplains said after his visit to Yablunska Street. “I heard a story about a woman riding her bicycle and being killed. … Wanton murders, true war crimes occurred there.”
At the memorial near St. Andrew the First-Called Church, Archbishop Lori knelt to pray. “That moment brought home to me the reality of this war,” he later said.
The nearby city of Irpin was one of the first in the Kyiv region to face intense assault during the war. Over 70% of the city’s infrastructure had been destroyed by the time it was recaptured by the Ukrainian military in March 2022. Some structures have now been rebuilt, including the now-iconic Romaniv Bridge.
The bridge was destroyed by Ukrainian forces to deter the Russian military from advancing toward Kyiv. In order to evacuate the city, thousands of Irpin residents, old and young, made their way carefully across the Irpin River through its ruins. Archbishop Lori stopped to see the bridge, now the site of a memorial called the Road of Life.
Archbishop Lori also visited the Church of the Nativity of the Theotokos in Irpin, home to Blessed Nicholas Charnetsky Council 16890, where the walls and iconostasis — the screen separating the church’s sanctuary from its nave — are marked with potholes from enemy shelling.
The church served as a refuge during the early days of the war, with the priest, a few parishioners and several Knights who decided to stay during the occupation celebrating daily Liturgy there.
“The men described it as a fight for survival. They remained with the parishioners, helping however they could,” Ostap Komarovskyi, the council’s deputy grand knight, recalled.
Among them was Volodymyr Ostapchuk, a member of Council 16890, who spent five days in the church basement during the assault on Irpin, treating his wife’s shrapnel wound. As an eyewitness, he guided Archbishop Lori on a tour of the city’s war sites.
Later in the evening, the supreme chaplain participated in a Coats for Kids distribution in Irpin hosted by Council 16890. The Knights welcomed 35 children who have lost their fathers — and in some cases, both parents — to the war, giving them warm jackets and sweet treats cooked by the Knights and their families.
“Some of the children to whom I gave coats were orphans of men who had been killed in Bucha and for whom I prayed at [the Road of Death] memorial,” Archbishop Lori said. “Your heart just goes out. You see not only the brutality of the death, but the wives and children who are left alone and destitute as a result.”
Members of Council 16890, men from Irpin and Bucha, remain deeply involved in supporting vulnerable, war-affected families, especially after the monthlong occupation and its aftermath.
“Our Knights have never been aloof from the problems that someone else had,” Komarovskyi said. “We have always stood united, offering help wherever we could and joining in wherever needed.”
Last year, the council donated wheelchairs to local residents with disabilities, people wounded in the war and patients at the Kyiv Regional Mental Health Center. The Knights also travel every month to Kyiv to pack care and hygiene packages, which they deliver to the wounded in hospitals in Irpin and Kyiv and to internally displaced people.
Father Vasyl Chudiyovych, the administrator of the Greek Catholic community in Bucha, said that initiatives such as Coats for Kids help to ease the suffering of war.
“The wounds and the tragedy that happened in Bucha still hurt, but we understand that the world stands in solidarity with us and shares our pain,” said Father Chudiyovych. “These children now feel the lack of a father’s love. That is why the Knights of Columbus, as a men’s community, understanding parental love and responsibility, strive to give them at least a part of this father’s care and support.”
The supreme chaplain promised the families present at the Irpin coat distribution that the entire Knights of Columbus community would remember the price of their loss and continue to support and pray for them.
“One of the things that we want to say to the Knights of Columbus, and to the whole Church, and even to the world is that we must not forget what happened here,” emphasized Archbishop Lori. “We must remember.”