UKRAINE: As humanitarian aid burns, bishop implores: ‘Don’t forget Ukraine’
A bishop in Ukraine has decried the destruction of thousands of pounds worth of humanitarian aid by a drone strike on Lviv as an attack on the most vulnerable.
Bishop Edward Kawa, Auxiliary Bishop of Lviv, told Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) that the drone strike on the Caritas-Spes warehouse in his diocese on Tuesday (19th September) was “an attack on the poorest and most needy”.
He explained that “all the relief goods” stored in the burnt-down facility “should have gone to Kharkiv and Pavlograd in the following days”.
According to reports obtained by ACN, 300,000 kg of charitable donations – the contents of 15 lorries – sent by the Vatican and others had been stored in the warehouse.
The items destroyed in the attack included food, shoes, winter clothing and more than 100 emergency generators.
A security guard in the warehouse was killed in the attack.
Pope Francis denounced the use of conventional weapons against civilian targets in a message to Ghanian Cardinal Peter Turkson following the drone strike.
Bishop Kawa said that four lorries had left the warehouse two days before the attack to transport relief goods to Zaporizhzhia, so not all donations were lost.
He also urged ACN benefactors not to forget about Ukraine.
He said: “Winter is coming, and the war is not over. God bless you.”
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, ACN has supported the local Church with more than 350 projects worth more than £13 million (€15 million).
ACN’s relief projects in the country have provided help to those most in need, as well as enabling priests, religious Sisters and lay people to attend to the spiritual and physical needs of the faithful.
With thanks to Sina Hartert