UKRAINE
Fr. Diego SAEZ, OMI
Postulator General
In the midst of the COVID-19 epidemic, we see how the whole Church is insistently addressing God in various ways. A beautiful initiative has emerged in the Oblate Family in Ukraine, related to one of the Oblate candidates for beatification and canonization: the Servant of God, Fr. Ludwik Wrodarczyk, OMI.
In 1942, in the midst of famines and food shortages during the World War II, people in Eastern Europe, hungry, exhausted, and desperate from so much hardship, were rapidly falling ill and dying without remedy. Because of the occupation, the confiscation of means of transport, young people being sent to the front, etc., there were neither rural doctors nor the possibility of transferring the sick to clinics.
An Oblate of Mary Immaculate, Fr Ludwik WRODARCZYK, had been in the borderlands between Poland and Ukraine (at present, Ukranian territory) for a few years. The borderlines were on the maps, but not in the heart of this Oblate. Ludwik was fond of cultivating medicinal herbs and making remedies and drugs, and he attended to the spiritual and physical needs of all those who needed his help, regardless of their religious affiliation or nationality: Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, Jews, Slovaks… Catholics of the Latin Rite, Catholics of the Byzantine Rite, Orthodox, Hebrews…
Fr. Ludwik was able to show the universal divine fatherhood by his life and example, putting himself at risk by travelling from one place to another, overcoming ethnic hatred and encountering the infected, which did not prevent him from being killed later, in 1943.
Since 2016, his cause for beatification and canonization has been open. Fr. Marek ROSTKOWSKI, OMI, Vice-Postulator for the Cause of Fr. Wrodarczyk, has composed a prayer asking for the intercession of the Servant of God to pray for the end of the epidemic and for the relief of the afflicted. The prayer has been approved by the competent diocesan bishop inthe diocesan procedure, Msgr. Vitalii Skomarovskyi, bishop of the diocese of Lutsk (Ukraine), to be spread among all the Catholic faithful of Ukraine.
Lord Jesus Christ, Physician of our souls and our bodies.
Through the intercession
of the Servant of God Ludwik Wrodarczyk,
who in life helped the sick and dying
in times of epidemic,
we humbly ask you to give us peace and health,
and, with your divine power stop the dangers from this disease.
Mother of God, Health of the sick,
take care of us, intercede for us,
and lead us into the love of your Son. Amen.
N. B. “Ludwik Wrodarczyk” is read “Ludvic Vrodarchik”.
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