Peace, shelter and hope: How a Polish-run convent in Ukraine is providing refuge to war victims

Faith in the future can be found in the village of Yazlovets on Easter Sunday as those displaced by Putin’s war gather to find comfort. Askold Krushelnycky is there to hear their stories

Sister Julia at a festival at Yazlovets convent in summer 2023 (Askold Krushelnycky)

A celebration of Easter at a Roman Catholic convent run by Polish nuns in western Ukraine, which has sheltered hundreds of Ukrainian refugees since the start of the war, has become a symbol of how the historically troubled relations between Poles and Ukrainians have been transformed.

On Easter Sunday, the church within the convent is crowded with parishioners – some of them refugees who are living here, and others from the surrounding area – for the Roman Catholic mass, said in Ukrainian by Polish and Ukrainian priests.

Among the parishioners are Roman Catholics, Ukrainian Catholics, and members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church – most of them refugees from eastern Ukraine.

Sister Julia, the most senior of the three nuns – two Polish, one Ukrainian – who run the convent, was born in Poland and has been in Yazlovets, the village that is home to the convent, since shortly after Ukraine became independent in 1991.

She says: “There have been very difficult and painful moments in the history between Poles and Ukrainians, but if you can say that something good has come out of the nightmare of a war, then the profound bonds that have arisen between Ukraine and Poland are certainly among those positive things.”

The convent occupies a building that was once the 18th-century palace of a Polish aristocratic family, who donated it in 1863 to the Roman Catholic Church. It is perched atop one of the rolling hills that circle Yazlovets, in western Ukraine’s Ternopil region.

Yazlovets convent occupies a building that once belonged to a Polish aristocratic family (Askold Krushelnycky)

The handsome, sprawling building hints at the former magnificence of the village. In the 15th and 16th centuries its enterprising Ukrainian, Polish and Jewish populations – augmented in the 14th century by Armenians fleeing the Mongol hordes – made Yazlovets into a thriving village that for generations rivalled Lviv, some 100 miles to the northwest, as the principal city of the region.

In the First World War, the town (as it was then), part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, had the misfortune to be close to the border with the Russian empire, and was severely damaged by Russian artillery, which also scarred the convent and palace.

The Second World War further ravaged Yazlovets, which became part of Soviet Ukraine and was stripped of its status as a town and designated a village. During the war, Ukrainian and Polish guerrillas, both fighting the Nazi occupation, also took part in vicious ethnic cleansing against each other’s communities in parts of western Ukraine, which has left memories of horrors that Moscow has long exploited to try to prevent the healing of old animosities.

Ironically, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with the huge support given by Poland, has produced the sort of rapprochement between the two nations that Moscow desperately wanted to scupper.

Since the Russians first invaded Ukraine in 2014, the convent has cared for refugees fleeing the occupied areas. And since the full-blown February 2022 onslaught, Sister Julia says, some 200 people have stayed at the convent, though some only for a short time.

Easter Sunday mass at Yazlovets convent (Askold Krushelnycky)

Currently some 33 refugees are permanently housed there – eight women and 25 children, who either attend local schools or have online lessons. Sister Julia says that in recognition of all the assistance the nuns have provided to refugees and the local community, the local authorities decided this weekend to hand over the former palace in its entirety to the convent.

Sister Julia says: “So many people and groups – religious and secular – from Poland, America, Germany, France, Spain, even Japan have provided assistance. Some come to repair and build, or chop the wood we need for heating. Others have delivered vehicles full of food, clothes, medicines.

“Some of that we have used, but this place has also served as a collection point for aid delivered from all over the world, and most of it has been sent on to the east, including to the soldiers at the front lines.”

Nadia, 74, and her daughter Oksana, 54, who fled from their eastern Ukrainian city of Lysychansk in April 2022, were first evacuated to Lviv in western Ukraine and then given shelter in Poland, along with hundreds of thousands of other Ukrainians. After 10 months, they jumped at the chance to go to Yazlovets, arriving there in January 2023.

Nadia says: “I think that I first really felt the presence of God when so many strangers in Ukraine and Poland offered me a home, food, clothes when I and my daughter had nothing and no money. The nuns at Yazlovets do not try to press the Catholic faith on us, but all of us can see the strength of their faith and admire the work they have done to help others.

A memorial to a fallen Ukrainian soldier from the 1919 war between Ukrainians and Poles (Askold Krushelnycky)

“In any case, there is one God, isn’t there? And we attend the masses because they give us hope.”

After Sunday mass, the nuns and the refugees eat a traditional Easter breakfast of smoked meats, boiled eggs, a sweet Easter bread and other delicacies blessed at a mass on Saturday, with friends in their rooms and later at a communal meal.

Six people from another refugee family share their meal in the room they all sleep in. Kateryna, 30, lives there with her four children, aged four to 13. Her husband, Mykola, was a volunteer soldier defending their native city of Kharkiv after the 2022 invasion, and was killed in battle against the Russians in March that year.

She, the children and her husband’s mother were evacuated to Yazlovets soon after Mykola’s death.

She says: “I can’t express how grateful we are for the peace and safety we have found here. We were all devastated and felt hopeless after the death of my husband. The nuns here have given us not only shelter but hope.”

Kateryna with her four children and their dog, Badyk (Askold Krushelnycky)

While her three eldest children attend online lessons, Kateryna busies herself making camouflage nets for Ukrainian frontline troops. The six of them eat their breakfast with a framed photograph of Mykola on the table.

Kateryna says: “The two eldest children were christened in the Ukrainian Orthodox faith, while the two youngest were christened as Roman Catholics here. I have no problems with that. Today we celebrate the resurrection by one calendar, and then we will mark Orthodox Easter on May 5.”

Many Ukrainians were shocked when, in March, Pope Francis seemed to suggest that Ukraine should haul up the white flag of surrender to avoid more deaths.

Sister Julia says: “I know that the Pope cares deeply about Ukraine. I feel his words were misinterpreted and there might be people of ill will around him. I know he has sent much assistance here and he wants Ukraine to be free.

“As to Ukraine and Poland, I think that our two nations have much in common going a long way back in history, and share similar traits of deep faith and courage. I believe that the future and survival of Poland and Ukraine depend on both standing together.”