HONG KONG (SE): The Claretian Missionaries in Hong Kong received news from Claretian Sister Joanna Pępkowska wrote that the Claretian sisters, like so many others, are helping Ukrainian refugees. They have an 75-year-old Ukrainian driver who is able to go back and forth across the border, going with an empty car to bring a few women and children from Ukraine back to Poland.
Sister Pepkowska said: “The situation is dramatic. [The] Majority of civilians leave Kyiv in order to get out of the country. From Kiyv —the capital—to Lviv, a city that is closer to [the] border with Poland it takes now 12 hours by train.”
She added, “The trains are overloaded and they only travel by night without any lights. They stop any time they encounter shooting.”
She explained that you can only stand for the 12 hour journey, “forget about toilets.”
Sister Pepkowska went on to say, however, that “when they reach Lviv, the situation gets even more dramatic. The train station is in state of chaos. There are so many people waiting for the transport. Some people decide to walk to the border with Poland to cross it.”
She said that in one of the pictures sent out by the Claretian sisters, there is a two-month-old baby girl whose mother walked with her to the border where she was taken by the Ukrainian driver of the sisters.
“They arrive to Poland without anything —just their own clothes,” the sisters’ message said.
The sisters provide them with first help, food, clothes, money to start with, and then they look for a place to stay. Those who come to them are women and children. The refugees are so traumatised that at the sound of the sirens of the fire engine truck, they run to the basement to look for shelter.
