At the same time, there was a lot of activity in front of St. Barbara’s Church in Vienna’s first district: Austrians and Ukrainians kept bringing relief supplies to Postgasse, which were to be taken from there to the Ukrainian borders.
“It is with great sadness, but also with Christian hope, that we have come together for this prayer on a day when the whole world is praying for peace, for the end of the war, for beloved Ukraine,” said the cardinal Schoenborn at the end of a Ukrainian-German-language service according to the Byzantine rite.
One prays for the victims of these acts of violence, for people who fear for their homeland and life, said a visibly shocked Schoenborn. “We feel a great powerlessness, but at the same time we must not give up hope,” he emphasized.
The spontaneous willingness to help in front of St. Barbara’s Church shows that people’s hearts are not closed and that kindness is stronger than violence. Even the hearts of those who are hardened can still be moved, the cardinal stressed.
The majority of the humanitarian aid deliveries collected in Austria would go to the “Committee for Medical Aid” and the “Herz für Herz” foundation in Uzhhorod in western Ukraine, explained a western Ukrainian responsible for logistical questions in Postgasse. However, he made it clear that there were limits to the receptiveness of his initiative. “If we asked all of Vienna, an atomic bomb would fall on us with humanitarian aid and we could no longer cope,” he told APA.
In addition, one would like the Austrian government to slowly take in refugees. “But that’s not our job,” he explained.
Source: Nachrichten
