Priests tortured in eastern Ukraine

Catholic World News - December 24, 2014

Rebels in Donetsk, a city of 975,000 that has been a center of separatist activity in eastern Ukraine, have occupied 11 out of the 67 parishes of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, according to the Religious Information Service of Ukraine (RISU).

Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk said that priests have crossed rebel lines to minister to the faithful and that some priests have faced torture.

“One of them was seated in electric chair,” he said, according to the RISU report. “After he endured torture, he was given a kind of permission to perform worship … The rest of the fathers get through enemy lines, their ability to reach those areas depends on the intensity of the fighting. We hope that the shelling subsides a little and all our fathers return.”