Ever since the outbreak of the pandemic, Polish Missionary in the Ukraine, Father Grzegorz Draus, has been visiting coronavirus patients in the hospitals twice a week.
“I visit every room in the hospital,” he explains to ACN. “I bless the patients and comfort them by the Good News: God’s love. I tell them that Jesus Christ is very close to them in their suffering, for he suffered some of the same symptoms as those fighting the disease: he too struggled to breathe”.
Father Grzegorz has been exercising his ministry in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, for the past nine years and now, more than ever, when the Lviv region counts thousands of cases of Covid-19 infections with countless fatalities, his mission is all the more important.
In order to spiritually strengthen them, Father Grzegorz hears confessions and gives Holy Communion. “Every day I experience a little miracle, for the number of people receiving Holy Communion is always equal to the number of hosts I brought with me,” he says.
In nearly 25 years he has spent since his ordination, loving the poor and the needy, this priest has never “for a single day” regretted his Ordination.
The only thing he desires is to follow the example of Saint Teresa of Calcutta, “who slept for only four or five hours a day, because she was full of zeal for her work and loved what she did. I too want to love what I do in the same way, right to the end,” he says.
To support the work of Ukrainian Priests and Religious during the pandemic, ACN is providing the necessary protective equipment—including face masks, gloves, antiseptic to 3,478 priests, 92 seminarians and about one thousand members of religious communities, for their own protection and to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
With your donation, ACN can continue to support these missionaries to make Christ’s love a reality for those who are suffering the devastation caused by the pandemic in some of the poorest parts of the world.
