With the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, Stefan actively participated in helping refugees from the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, helped to temporarily house refugees, providing them with food and basic necessities. Together with his friends from the seminary and his father’s parish, he founded an art court for refugees, helped the hospital in the town of Stryi, where orphans from Zaporizhzhia were evacuated, and was a facilitator in a summer camp for refugee children in the town of Skhidnytsia.
We continue to support Stefan in his seminary studies, also for the academic year 2022-2023.
Since September 2020 we have been supporting Stefan in his seminary studies.
Stefan was born in Donetsk in 2002; he is the third son of a Greek Catholic family with seven children. Stefan went to school in Donetsk until 2015, in his spare time he enjoyed playing football with his friends and learning to play the violin.
With the outbreak of war, the Greek Catholic community in Donetsk was persecuted; belonging to the church itself could lead to arrest. Stefan’s family moved to western Ukraine. Stefan graduated from Christian high school, felt called to devote himself to the priesthood and entered a preparatory year at the seminary in Lviv. After that he decided to study theology. Half of the costs of his studies are being met by the diocese, but the shortfall is too great and unaffordable for this large family in which only the father has a job.
Since September 2020 Ad Pacem has been supporting Stefan with €500 a year.
In his letter of September 2020 Stefan writes to us: “I sincerely thank and pray for all my benefactors from Ad Pacem for their help.”