We heard various recordings of phone calls between the occupiers, in which a wife of a Russian soldier calls on him to rape Ukrainian women to make it more pleasant for him ... We see how freely Russian women expect money for their dead or wounded husbands… His Beatitude Sviatoslav, the Father and Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church said in his daily address on the 52nd day of Russia's war against Ukraine.
The Primate focused on the ninth God’s Commandment which says: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife." According to the Archbishop, this God's Commandment protects the dignity of the human person, which is created in His image and likeness.
This commandment tells us that a man can never be reduced to the level of a thing, to a simple object of desire. “This law of God, this word of God, - the Head of the Church believes, - especially protects the dignity of women.
A woman is not the property of a man, after all. The woman can never be the object of desire, commerce, or worse - humiliation. A human person can never be an instrument for a third goal, it can never be something that can be so easily sacrificed to achieve a political, economic or consumer goal.
His Beatitude Sviatoslav noted that today the Ukrainian woman is the heroine of this war ... “She gives her life for the Motherland with weapons in her hands alongside our male heroes. She is fighting heroically on the front of humanitarian aid. She is a heroine, a guardian of human life during the war in Ukraine, a guardian of family comfort and hearth. This is the foster mother who keeps her children when they are on the road as refugees or forced to flee their Motherland”, the spiritual leader said.
“How important it is for us today to defend human dignity and women's dignity” - the Primate emphasized. According to him, during the war we see how the enemy tries to mock a woman the most. Today we pray for Ukrainian women and we want to pay them our respect so that God's law continues to stand on the side of the life in Ukraine, our Mother”, added the Head of the UGCC.