April 13-20, 2025

Christ is risen!

These days, when we expect and experience the transition of our Lord from death to life, are a special time of spiritual closeness. A time when we experience abandonment, but at the same time the hope is so close: life wins over death, we pass with Christ to the resurrection. The stone has been rolled away from the tomb, and the tomb is empty – Christ has overcome death!

This week, our social kitchens and bakeries worked at full capacity: we prepared Easter dishes for our Defenders. Our kitchen in Kherson prepared more than 270 blessed Easter gifts, which were handed over to give our soldiers a little bit of home. Also, 370 families of the fallen Heroes from Fastiv and the surrounding area received Easter baskets. We thank the director of the Fastiv Children’s Music School, Mr. Mykola Sokyrko, for organizing a mini concert for the families of the fallen Heroes. We sincerely thank for supporting this initiative to Charitables Freta and all the faithful who come to the Dominican Priory of Warszawa – Freta. Special thanks to our cooks and bakers who baked 5100 Easter paskas and worked around the clock, as well as to all our volunteers and friends. Thank you XENIA Association for the food!

Thank you, dear Charitables in Christ, for the Easter fair that you organized to support the children we care for so that this year we can together give them a time of recovery, joy, and simply childhood that the war steals from them. The charitable donations you collected in the amount of PLN 34,634 are a great support in our turbulent time.

A special gift these days was that the provincial of the Dominican Friars in the Czech Republic, Fr. Lukáš Fošum, came to us on Thursday and stayed until Good Friday to share with us the joy of waiting for the Resurrection and spiritual renewal. Many thanks to the Dominican communities in the Czech Republic, who collected 9,400 euros for us during Lent.

We thank our benefactors and partners: Univest Marketing Company—for paper products for the social canteen, and First Sewing Factory “Kozak”—for financial support of social projects. We thank the director of the Private School “Scherzo” in Krakow, Mrs. Ilona Preiss-Borowicz, all the children, parents and teachers who organized the Easter fair in support of the St. Martin Center, remembering the children in Ukraine. We are sincerely grateful for all your efforts and sacrifice.

We also thank the children, parents and teachers of the St. Martin de Porres Catholic School, who held a charity fair in support of our Defenders this week and collected 13,700 UAH.

At 12:00 near our church we blessed and handed over Easter baskets for lonely and needy Fastiv residents who visit our social canteen in Fastiv, so that no one is left lonely or abandoned during these holidays.

We are pleased that even in these difficult times of war and turmoil, the joy of the Easter mystery is shared with us by Ms. Giulia Cerqueti, a journalist from Milan who speaks and writes a lot about Ukraine and cares about us.

All these gestures of kindness and presence strengthen our hope, because the Lord is Risen, and we will never be alone again – He walks with us through the pages of our history. In Him is our strength and power.

With prayers

Fr. Mykhailo Romaniv OP