People from Mariupol write to the Pope: “City in ashes, but it is still possible to help us”
The Ukrainian population, beset by the war, wrote to the Pope: “Mothers, wives and children of the defenders of Mariupol”, as the authors of the letter, which reached the Vatican through Cardinal Michael Czerny, signed. The cardinal stressed to the Vatican media how this “letter to the Holy Father proves what he said from the beginning”, especially during the Easter Urbi et Orbi message, “when he spoke clearly of the total irrationality of the war”. . A city, we read, “reduced to ashes” under attack “24 hours a day,” the epicenter of “an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe in 21stcentury Europe, with its series of “indiscriminate attacks,” unjustified destruction, and untold suffering for those who protect international humanitarian law instead. “Holy Father, it is still possible to help those who are suffering”, although the number of those who do not manage to do so increases every day”, the Pope’s invocation addressed to us the wives and children of those who are still in Mariupol resist, announce the presence of hundreds of civilian and military wounded, deprived of any healing due to the exhaustion of medicines and disinfectants, and therefore “must be evacuated from the battlefield”. In particular, the pages describe the situation at the Azovstal plant, the steel plant that became the front line of the decisive battle, where, in addition to the Ukrainian army, there are still about a thousand civilians. “At the beginning of the fighting we read these people thought that life in the military would not only give them security, but also the possibility of obtaining food, water and medical care.” Instead, what appeared to be a fortress is now become a “trap” for many women and children, unreachable even just to “deliver food and drinking water”.