Marking famine, pope urges Ukrainians to defend threatened peoples

Published: 2003-11-26

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- As Ukrainians held memorial liturgies and prayer vigils to honor the victims of a forced famine 70 years ago, Pope John Paul II urged them to transform their mourning into a defense of other threatened peoples. In Ukraine and in Ukrainian communities around the world, services were held in late November to remember the 1932-33 famine, which was engineered by Soviet leader Josef Stalin and led to the deaths of more than 7 million Ukrainians. In a Nov. 23 letter to Eastern-rite Cardinal Lubomyr Husar of Lviv, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, and to the Latin-rite archbishop of Lviv, Cardinal Marian Jaworski, the pope paid tribute to those who died. The press office of the Ukrainian Catholic Church released an English translation of the message Nov. 25. Pope John Paul said remembering dramatic events is a human necessity, but it also is an opportunity to educate new generations to "become watchful guardians of respect for the dignity of every human person."

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