During a recent visit to Ukraine, Mission Magazine spoke with Father Oleksandr “Sashko” Bohomaz, a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest and military chaplain now working at St. Volodymyr Ukrainian Greek Catholic Parish in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia.
Previously, Father Bohomaz had ministered in Melitopol, some 85 miles south of Zaporizhzhia. After Russian forces took control of the city in late February 2022, Father Bohomaz and his pastor, Father Petro Krenitskyi, continued to serve their parishioners for nine months under occupation, until they were both expelled from the area into Ukrainian-held territory within the Zaporizhzhia region.
Father Bohomaz shared with Mission Magazine how Russia’s war on Ukraine has shaped his ministry – and how the conflict has intensified his desire to show that “in the midst of all this hell… God is good.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Mission Magazine: After your expulsion from Melitopol, how did you continue your pastoral ministry?
Father Bohomaz: After the “deportation,” I needed several months to adapt, because during the nine months of my experience of life in occupied Melitopol, serving under the Russian occupation, a certain style of service had already developed. First of all, I had to get used to freedom, because there (in occupied Melitopol) you are afraid to even think about some things. So once here, I had to get used to freedom and see where I could be as effective as possible.
Mission Magazine: And what did you discern?
Father Bohomaz: I really wanted to be useful to our soldiers who come from Melitopol or from the surrounding area where we had served. In Zaporizhzhia, there are also Melitopol citizens who had fled. There are young people who come from the occupied territories where their homes, villages, and cities are currently under Russian occupation. And there are young people who come from front-line towns and villages. One of them converted to the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church here in Zaporizhzhia after his grandfather was released from captivity. His grandfather and I got to know each other, and through his grandfather, this guy came to the church, became a Greek Catholic, and now dreams of becoming a priest.
Mission Magazine: You devote much of your ministry to being a military chaplain. How do you bring faith to those under fire?
Father Bohomaz: I try to serve our military as much as possible. In fact, sometimes it happens that I serve in Zaporizhzhia only on Sundays; thank God, there are priests who serve here during the week.
I try to drive close to the front, where there are field hospitals and so-called “stabilization points,” where wounded soldiers are taken and stabilized. I travel to different cities that are close to the front, such as the Donetsk region, the Zaporizhzhia region – where my friends serve, where there is a need.
Last summer, you could say that I lived with the military for almost the entire season. And there were huge conversions. I listened to many, many different confessions. My friendship with the military has been a great experience.
I was also present with them, and I saw the pain they are going through due to the loss of their close friends. Most of these soldiers also come from the occupied territories, so it adds to such suffering that they cannot be at home.
Mission Magazine: You also work closely with children and youth here at St. Volodymyr. Can you describe that ministry?
Father Bohomaz: Well, I am an employee here at the parish, so if I am not with the military, I am with the youth. We held an evangelization camp for Zaporizhia youth. We had 35 children, young people, and teenagers there, and 50 percent of them had no idea about God. They may have been baptized, but they were not practicing Christians, just as their parents were not practicing Christians at all.
We gave them the kerygma (the proclamation of Christ’s love and salvation), and in the process they began to know God. Some began to prepare for the sacrament of Reconciliation.
It’s such a great experience, serving the youth.
Mission Magazine: What do you say to both these young people and to the soldiers amid this horrific war so that they grow in faith, and continue to believe?
Father Bohomaz: Well, first of all, there are a huge number of questions for God. And it is obvious that I am looking for God’s answers myself in my personal prayer, in my personal spiritual search. In specific situations, the Lord gives some kind of answer to these questions.
For soldiers who are fighting, and for people who have lost their homes and relatives, very often it is not words that are important, but presence.
For example, there are military medics who do not come out of the basements. They save lives, resuscitate the wounded and stabilize their condition right in the basement. And when, despite the terrible danger, I go to the basement and serve with them, give them confession there, and then run to the car and run away from the drones, they appreciate it. I don’t know if they remember what I tell them, but they definitely remember that I’m there with them, and they’re waiting.
Presence is important to people, and people here value authenticity very much. If I were false and I did not believe in what I say – that God is love, that God is good – and if I did not live by it, then it would be apparent to me and to these people. They would feel this fakeness, and they wouldn’t communicate with me.
Twice I gave a general absolution for military who were to go into battle right at that moment. I understood that some of them would not return – and they understood it too. Their condition was terrible, because they understood that they were going to die. But when I gave them general absolution – when they had been cleansed and had accepted the Lord – their faces changed. And they began to believe that life is eternal. At that moment I saw that the Lord was definitely touching them in some supernatural way, making them feel that they would not be lost, that He is with them, that God is good.
Despite it all, God won, Jesus won. Amid all this hell, all this evil, God is good.
**Gina Christian is a multimedia Catholic journalist who traveled to Ukraine in September 2024 as part of a delegation led by Metropolitan Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia.
