Last night, Ukrainians celebrated Ukraine’s 31st Independence Day with a service in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna and prayed for their war-torn homeland. According to the police, around 900 people then loudly marched through downtown Vienna – they sang Ukrainian songs and chanted the slogans that have been heard again and again at demos in Vienna since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began exactly six months ago.
“Let us pray for many people who are awake following all these events and are ready for a peace service, for prayers, but also for loving, helping action in solidarity with a country that has been so badly prepared by a foreign aggressor,” said cathedral priest Toni in his intercession Faber, who celebrated the service together with Ukrainian clergy. “Be kind to my people,” appealed the Ukrainian ambassador in Vienna, Wassyl Chymynez, in a speech from the pulpit to the Austrians present.
Similar events also took place in Germany. In Berlin, for example, thousands protested against the war after prayers in the Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz.