A Mission to Do More

In the Cathedral of St. George in Lviv — the spiritual heart of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church — more than 500 people lingered after Divine Liturgy on 17 January for a rare chance to experience the comfort of sacred silence under the daily weight of war.

Most were teachers from across Ukraine, who had traveled to Lviv for a conference on inclusive education. The liturgy the next day highlighted outstanding educators.

In the crypt below lie the tombs of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and Major Archbishop Josyf Slipyj, both of whom promoted a vision of the church as a school of responsibility and education as a long-term strategy for a principled society.

With few Catholic schools in Ukraine, this vision has inspired members of the local church, including the Rev. Yuriy Karvatskyi, to start educational initiatives that engage the wider society. 

Father Karvatskyi, 31, cofounded the Father Yulian Dzerovych Educational Center of the Archeparchy of Lviv in 2017. In partnership with public schools, the center cultivates educational spaces where spiritual formation and professional growth converge with the aim of integrated human development.

“We saw a chance to offer more than professional training, to accompany the person as a whole, not in their functions, but as a human being,” he says.

“Education is not only about lessons. It’s a triangle of parents, teachers and children,” he continues.

Father Karvatskyi speaks of the need for leaders in Ukraine who can guide others toward solidarity, resilience and recovery. Last November, his center organized the School of National Consciousness at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv to promote identity and civic responsibility among young adults. The daylong program included a panel discussion, lectures and hands-on workshops. 

“We can have good schools and good universities, but if a teenager does not understand why they are there, even the best education will not bear fruit,” he says. “You have to show them: You can be a leader, you can change your country, you can be part of a larger process.”

The center organized a similar day on the theme, “Inclusion Without Illusions,” in partnership with Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU), for educators, psychologists and resource specialists at St. George Cathedral in Lviv on 16 January. The aim was to equip those responsible for inclusive education to stand with the vulnerable and to respond to their needs.

Dmytro Sherengovskyi, 38, vice rector for outreach and social engagement at UCU, says faith-driven education must be tangible beyond the theology class in disciplines that appear purely secular.

At the university, based in Lviv, faith-based values also permeate campus life through volunteering, communal living, formation programs, and the steady presence of prayer and liturgy, he adds. 

“What matters here is not only what you study but how you then live and act,” Mr. Sherengovskyi says. “That is what forms a person.”

UCU has more than 2,500 students across 12 undergraduate and 18 master’s programs. The private university receives no state funding and is sustained through donations and tuition.

Ivanna Mohyliak, 46, who heads the student life office, says formation is woven into the university’s daily rhythm and reflected in its motto, “A University That Serves.” All 480 first-year students must take a course called “Service,” in which they “work in groups and develop ideas for social projects,” she says.

Many join initiatives that support soldiers and children. Others organize outreach activities that seek to restore community and a sense of stability for those displaced by the ongoing war with Russia.

Andriy Hlushko, a second-year theology student, lives at the Collegium, the university’s on-campus residential community, where daily life is shaped with intentionality.

Mr. Hlushko says he has learned a lot from Emmaus House, a home for adults with special needs, which is integrated into the Collegium. In those intentional daily encounters, he says, one learns to accept people unconditionally — a practice that matters for anyone who later will shape institutions, policies and communities. 

This past winter, Mr. Hlushko’s volunteer work included traveling to the front lines in the Zaporizhzhia region with UCU’s student choir to sing Christmas carols and spend time with communities under the constant strain of war.

Sister Mariia Radist Hrynyk, I.V.E., deputy master of the Collegium, coordinates a formation track that accompanies academic study. Its purpose, she says, is to help young adults grow spiritually and witness to faith in their actions and behavior.

Anzhelika Stakhovska, 37, a recent UCU graduate, joined the national office of Caritas-Spes Ukraine in 2022. Caritas-Spes is the charitable arm of the Roman Catholic community in Ukraine.

“I had a great job,” she says. “But, for me, it was work without a mission. I wanted to do something that had meaning and put my talents at the service of my country.” 

Trained as a linguist, she began as a translator, then moved into safeguarding — a field that at the time had almost no resources available in Ukrainian. With strong English skills and access to international training, she began translating global best practices into policy. Helping to build the safeguarding system from the ground up became her central achievement and the topic of her master’s thesis at UCU’s Institute of Leadership and Management. 

“This is the only program in Ukraine for nonprofit organizations,” she says. “Programs abroad do not provide our [Ukrainian] context.” 

“In a humanitarian crisis, the church must know how to help professionally.”

Solomia Maksymovych, director of the UCU institute, says the graduate program in nonprofit management “gives a full picture of how to build a civil-society organization, from strategy to project management” and draws both young professionals and seasoned leaders with MBAs and management experience. 

Graduate Kateryna Lutsyk, 29, now leads a support space for veterans in Khmelnytskyi, western Ukraine, where she helps soldiers and their families return to civilian life.

Upon graduating from medical college, Ms. Lutsyk enlisted as a volunteer combat medic with an air assault unit. She served from 2015 to 2021. During Russia’s military incursion into eastern Ukraine, she moved with the battalion across multiple sectors, saving more than 200 lives, until the unarmored car in which she was traveling came under sniper fire. She was left with irreversible damage: a brain hemorrhage, deafness in one ear and partial atrophy of her optic nerves. She now undergoes treatment and monitoring every six months to reduce the risk of stroke.

Adapting to civilian life took time, she says of its challenges, but she soon moved into advocacy, promoting internationally — including at the United Nations, the World Bank and the U.S. Senate — the recognition of women in the Ukrainian military. Women who had served in combat were recorded as cooks or seamstresses, a bureaucratic erasure that also meant lost protections, pay and benefits. In 2019, Ukraine passed legislation granting women access to 63 combat roles and 450 noncombat roles previously closed to them.

Ms. Lutsyk was in Khmelnytskyi three years later, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. She says she and other veterans had been warning of a full-scale invasion, preparing, planning trainings and sketching emergency protocols. 

Within hours of the invasion, the city center filled with hundreds of people. “You could see fear in everyone’s eyes, and they wanted someone to tell them what to do,” she recalls.

Her new mission crystallized in this moment of crisis, and she decided the graduate program at UCU would give her the framework — values, tools and community — and the skills to lead a team, build a system and drive change to bring her new mission to life.

“This isn’t just formal education,” she says. “It’s about the dignity of every person.”

This article was published in our ONE magazine, the March edition, 2026. Read it in our digital print format here.

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