ARCHDIOCESE OF MELBOURNE RELEASE:
Catholic clergy take position on the ground in Crimea
Communications Office, Friday 7 March 2014
BISHOPS called for prayers for peace, but a priest in the naval port of Sevastopol said the families of Catholic troops serving with Ukrainian and Russian forces were "deeply confused and worried" about the military confrontation in the Crimean peninsula.
Fr Jerzy Ziminski, rector of the St Clement, Pope and Martyr Parish in Sevastopol, told Catholic News Service that he had had no contacts with Russian commanders in the city, but said he had been "treated politely" and allowed through by occupying Russian units when he visited Ukrainian troops March 3 in their local barracks.
He criticized ethnic Russians who were staging independence demonstrations in the streets.
"They were sitting here like cowards, like rats under a broom -- but as soon as the Russian army arrived, they went out into the streets," he said. "What's the point of being here if you can only live behind a cordon, supported by a foreign army from beyond the Kerch Strait, and only occasionally appearing as an assembled rabble?"
He criticized ethnic Russians who were staging independence demonstrations in the streets.
"They were sitting here like cowards, like rats under a broom -- but as soon as the Russian army arrived, they went out into the streets," he said. "What's the point of being here if you can only live behind a cordon, supported by a foreign army from beyond the Kerch Strait, and only occasionally appearing as an assembled rabble?"
SHARED FROM ARCHDIOCESE OF MELBOURNE
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