Ukrainian youth wrapped in support, encouragement at WYD

August 08, 2023

Our Sunday Visitor

Maria Shubina arrived in Lisbon much earlier than other youth traveling for World Youth Day — 17 months earlier, to be exact, in March 2022. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia had just started in her country and Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital and her hometown, became too dangerous. Her mom, who had raised 16-year-old Maria on her own, decided it was better to leave the country.

“We lived in Lviv for about a month, then in Poland, and then the Portuguese volunteers just approached us and said they can take us here,” Maria said. “We found good people who helped us.”

Maria said the family who hosted them was not “very rich,” but “they believed in God and they helped us very much.”

Maria was sitting on the stairs leading to the baroque church of Our Lady of Grace Aug. 2, overlooking a spectacular view of Lisbon’s red rooftops, when a group of Portuguese youth approached her and asked her to sign their flag.

Archbishop Borys Gudziak of Philadelphia said when the WYD crowd sees youth “with blue and yellow Ukrainian flags, they offer a lot of support and encouragement and say, we’re praying for you, and we’re with you, and we hope that peace and justice come to Ukraine,” he told OSV News.

Read the article