In an October 18 video message, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, said that ‘the violence, the mass murders that we see today in Ukraine, they are simply incredible.”

“But one of the features of this war—which will probably go down in history as a war of particular violence against the intimate sphere of a person—will be characterized by a certain weapon that Russia uses against Ukraine: sexuality is being used as a weapon, as a tool for contempt and humiliation of the human person,” he continued. “We have a large number of horrific cases of mass rape. We have cases where girls and women became pregnant from their abusers.”

“Let’s all surround those women with our attention, love, and prayer. Let’s warm them with the warmth of our whole nation,” the prelate added. “Because the facts of violence against women in Russian captivity, which they recount, just break the heart and make the blood boil in our veins.”