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"Solidarity & Mercy" with Chris Herlinger · The Weight

• 0:00
  Chris McAlilly: I'm Chris McAlilly.
• 0:01
  Eddie Rester: And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.
• 0:04
  Eddie Rester: Today our guest is Chris Herlinger. He's written a book called "Solidarity and Mercy." It's a book written about not just the war in Ukraine, but what Christians are doing to alleviate the suffering and offer hope in Ukraine.
• 0:20
  Chris McAlilly: He's an international correspondent for National Catholic Reporters, Global Sisters Report, which is several words, but what he does is he tells the stories of Catholic sisters, nuns who are working throughout the world.
• 0:36
  Chris McAlilly: And if you're looking for a place for to experience some hope in the midst of a landscape that includes war, division, pain, suffering, you could look in, I think, not any better place than among Catholic nuns around the world. They have, they are people that engage with solidarity and mercy.
• 1:05
  Eddie Rester: And have a vast network.
• 1:06
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah.
• 1:07
  Eddie Rester: That we forget about
• 1:08
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah. I mean, they're under the radar and working sometimes in very small and micro situations, but they are offering the love of Christ in very powerful ways.
• 1:18
  Eddie Rester: For me, it was just a reminder that with all that goes on in the world and the news that comes by us, we miss stories, sometimes. This is a story of a war that's been going on for two and a half years. It just continues to grind on. And I think for us on the other side of the world, we just tend to put that aside.
• 1:36
  Eddie Rester: We've got the election. We've got, you know, football games.
• 1:39
  Eddie Rester: We've got other things going on, but the people of Ukraine continue to suffer. But there are glimmers of hope for them in the community that they build, and people and followers of Jesus who continue to provide hope for them.
• 1:57
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, Chris zeros in on one specific convent in Ukraine, two displaced women, tells the story of their survival, tells the story of the love and support that they've received.
• 2:10
  Chris McAlilly: And when you kind of hear these stories, and you read some of his writing, even more so, you get a sense of kind of the power that is there, and so we're glad that you're listening with us on The Weight. We hope that you enjoy the episode.
• 2:28
  Chris McAlilly: [INTRO] The truth is, the world is growing more angry, more bitter, and more cynical. People don't trust one another, and we feel disconnected.
• 2:39
  Eddie Rester: The way forward is not more tribalism. It's more curiosity that challenges what we believe, how we live, and how we treat one another. It's more conversation that inspires wisdom, healing, and hope.
• 2:51
  Chris McAlilly: So we launched The Weight podcast as a space to cultivate sacred conversation with a wide range of voices at the intersection of culture and theology, art and technology, science and mental health, and we want you to be a part of it.
• 3:06
  Eddie Rester: Join us each week for the next conversation on The Weight. [END INTRO]
• 3:14
  Chris McAlilly: We're here today with Chris Herlinger. Thanks for being with us today.
• 3:20
  Chris Herlinger: Good to see you both. Nice to connect with some people in Mississippi.
• 3:25
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, we were just saying that you need to make it down to Mississippi sometime. You're in New York.
• 3:29
  Chris McAlilly: That's where you're based?
• 3:31
  Chris Herlinger: That's right.
• 3:31
  Chris Herlinger: That's right.
• 3:32
  Chris McAlilly: What brought you to New York? What is, how long have you been there? And kind of, tell, for folks who might not know you, give us a little bit of the scope of of your vocation.
• 3:44
  Chris Herlinger: Sure. Uh, I grew up in Denver and then went to college in Minnesota, at Macalester College, a small liberal arts school with ties to the Presbyterian Church. And it was there that I majored in history, but I started to study religion, and that was a important part of sort of getting me acquainted with what I would call progressive Christianity. I grew up as an Episcopalian. Went out to the hinterlands of Minnesota after college, worked several newspaper jobs, and just started becoming interested in religion and reporting on it, and did enough reporting, both in Minnesota, but also some international trips to various parts of the world, including Latin America, the Philippines, Chile, South Africa, and that all helped me get a fellowship to study at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where I was there from '91 to '93. And then have stayed, worked as a freelancer for a while, actually, for the United Methodists for a bit.
• 5:00
  Chris Herlinger: And then hooked up with the humanitarian organization, Church World Service, where I was there for, I think, 18 years as a writer. Very fortunate.
• 5:09
  Chris Herlinger: Traveled the world. Covered a lot of international emergencies, including, let's see Haiti, Darfur, so many, so many places, the Balkans. And then, while I was doing that, I started freelancing for National Catholic Reporter. And that led into getting hired full-time in my current position, which is the international correspondent for National Catholic Reporters, Global Sisters Report. We report on the work of Catholic sisters, internationally and domestically. And as part of my portfolio, I also cover the sisters at the United Nations.
• 5:55
  Chris Herlinger: That's what led me to...
• 5:59
  Chris McAlilly: So how many sisters? How many sisters are at the United Nations?
• 6:05
  Eddie Rester: Do they have a presence that works with United Nations? Or is that just part of kind of the mission of the sisters to be connected?
• 6:15
  Chris Herlinger: Yeah, Chris, that's a good question. I don't really... There are, at least, I would say there were at least two dozen, two dozen sisters who work, doing advocacy work at the UN. Let me be clear, they're not part of the official UN system, but they are there as doing NGO work for their congregations.
• 6:41
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:41
  Chris McAlilly: That's fascinating. I had no idea that there was a presence of religious that we're kind of connected to and affiliated with the UN.
• 6:50
  Chris Herlinger: Yeah. There are. There are, yeah. And it's not just the sisters. There are also priests, priests and clergy involved in doing that as well.
• 6:58
  Chris Herlinger: But I do think that the sisters have a very robust presence, and it's been a great pleasure to cover them through the years.
• 7:09
  Chris Herlinger: I've had this job since, let's see, 2015 so it's been almost a decade, and I've been fortunate to. I mean, it's one of the best jobs in journalism, I say, but it's allowed me to travel and cover emergencies in many cases, and so that's what led me, first, to Poland and then eventually going into Ukraine four times since the full-scale invasion in 2022.
• 7:39
  Eddie Rester: You've written a book about that, "Solidarity & Mercy." I want to talk about that in just a second, but I really want to go back and pick up you've really reported on some of the places of the most incredible pain, destruction, and death even all around the world. What is it like going in and trying to find the story that will really help folks on another side of the world begin to connect and understand what's going on? I mean, that's a big responsibility, I would think.
• 8:16
  Chris Herlinger: Well, you know, I mean, when I was at Church World Service, I had sort of a ready-made network. I would come in and meet with CWS staff, and they were, of course, aligned with partners, with small NGOs.
• 8:31
  Chris Herlinger: And so their work was always focused on doing the right thing. And that's been a similar pattern with the work I've done, covering sisters. You know, before I make a trip--and this is sometimes difficult, because it's we're connected with sisters, in terms of, we have contacts, but we sometimes have to dig into that. But once those connections are made, I always feel like I'm in really, really good hands, because the sisters are going to get me into places where I can see what's happened and I can talk to survivors of certain situations.
• 9:27
  Chris Herlinger: But I'm always trying to tell a story, both about what has happened and what is happening in these very tough, tough situations. But what is the human response? What is the church-based response? And I think in those corners, I find good work being done, and certainly hope being kept alive.
• 9:56
  Eddie Rester: I think sometimes we, you know, I'm very guilty of this. We look at these situations, and we just internationally, we glance across them, and we think about maybe the pain or the war in Ukraine, but we don't get those stories of what the people are doing on the ground, faith-based people to really bring hope, to bring even the pieces of hope, food and, you know, encouragement, those kinds of things. Do you find that people in general are aware of those?
• 10:35
  Eddie Rester: Or is it something when you tell the stories, people are surprised that those kinds of things are happening? I know when I read a piece of your book about the Ukraine, I was like, I never would have thought that the sisters would still be there and embedded there in parts of Ukraine like that. What's the response typically?
• 10:55
  Chris Herlinger: Well, I think, I mean, I always tell people, and sometimes I'm asked this, if you were giving money to a group, who would you who would you give money to? And, I mean, I've found there are certainly exceptions to this, but I think in most of my travels, I think many groups are doing good work.
• 11:23
  Chris Herlinger: It's often limited. No group is taking care of all the needs.
• 11:32
  Chris Herlinger: You can't possibly do that. But I do think the sisters have a particular spot in this greater humanitarian response, because they are close to the people, they are close to the grassroots, and they stay with the people, and they stay with the communities who are who are hurting. And that's something that I certainly saw when I was in Ukraine.
• 11:57
  Chris Herlinger: So getting back to the question I'm often asked about, who would you give money to? If you know of a group of Catholic Sisters doing work, I think you can always depend that the the money will be used wisely and will be reaching people. It's it's limited, as I said. I mean, some of what sisters are doing is very, very small scale, going to communities in need, but their presence is something that's keenly felt by people affected by these really, you know, tough, tough situations.
• 12:34
  Chris McAlilly: One of the stories that I'm reminded of that I heard several years ago from a friend of mine, who does significant amount of work in the Mississippi Delta, is that there's a surprising number of Catholic sisters that are in the Delta offering health care, mainly kind of in the area of health care. For those who aren't familiar, the Mississippi Delta is an economically depressed region of the state, and one of the most economically depressed regions in America, and in some of these communities, when you drive through, it really is... There can be places where there's not a ton of hope. And I do think that the person that was telling me the story of the presence of the sisters was expressing the way in which their Christian witness--offering kindness, offering love, offering care, tenderness, gentleness, suppor--was incredibly powerful against the economic landscape.
• 13:40
  Chris McAlilly: I do think you probably need to come down here and tell that story,Chris. We were talking about how to get you to Mississippi. That would be a way to get you to Mississippi.
• 13:47
  Eddie Rester: That really would be a great...
• 13:49
  Chris Herlinger: No, no. I like that, but I wonder. But
• 13:51
  Chris McAlilly: I do wonder, you know, is there a specific story that you might lift up, the name of a particular individual, or one that's been specifically in inspiring for you of an individual or a group?
• 14:08
  Chris Herlinger: Well, let's, yeah, I mean, let's focus on the on the Ukraine response today.
• 14:13
  Chris Herlinger: People can look this up, there was an excerpt from my book on our Global Sisters website, talking about the work of Sister Lucia, a Ukrainian sister. It's the Order of St. Basil. And she and her congregation, they're Catholic. Ukraine, of course, is predominantly Orthodox, but there is a small but very vibrant Catholic, they call it Greek Catholic. They're Eastern right congregation, but there's a church, but they're still Catholic. She hosted me in the city of Zaporizhzhia, which is in southeast Ukraine, and not far from the front. And they've had some some challenges.
• 15:04
  Chris Herlinger: The city has been bombarded through the last two years.
• 15:09
  Chris Herlinger: Luckily, when I was there in February, there were no bombardments. Although, when I returned back home, there were reports of shelling going on in the city. And I texted Sister Lucia. She said, Well, we're fine, but there's always, always that worry. Anyway, she took me.
• 15:27
  Chris Herlinger: She was my host, primary host, as I said, and we went the very, very first day I arrived, we went to an area that was very, very close to the front, and this was a small community. And Sister Lucia, and her colleague, Sister Romana, who was visiting from elsewhere in Ukraine, they brought with them small cleanup kits. You know, they were handing out things like cleaning solutions, detergent, that sort of thing. These were very, very small, very, very small packages.
• 16:10
  Chris Herlinger: And what I noticed, these communities near the front, these are primarily older people who are very, very poor, and are determined to stay there. They don't want to leave. They don't want to go to Zaporizhzhia, which is about 45 minutes away.
• 16:32
  Chris Herlinger: They don't want to be uprooted and displaced, and they want to continue being where they are.
• 16:38
  Chris Herlinger: So what I noticed was that this... The items that were being distributed, I mean, those were nice. But I think what was really powerful was just the presence of the two sisters meeting with the community members, and the fact that someone from the outside was there, offering kindness and offering some, again, some sense of hope. And I think that personal touch was very, very important to the to the people who were in these communities.
• 17:21
  Eddie Rester: That...
• 17:22
  Chris Herlinger: Yeah, please go ahead.
• 17:23
  Eddie Rester: No, I was just going to say, just as I think it sounds like as well, that they weren't abandoned. That the church, the people who, the sisters, who seek to mediate the presence of Christ, had not left them, had not abandoned them.
• 17:40
  Eddie Rester: Was there a sense of that as well?
• 17:45
  Chris Herlinger: Oh, sure, sure.
• 17:45
  Chris Herlinger: And, you know, it's interesting.
• 17:49
  Chris Herlinger: I didn't... When you're in these situations as a journalist, there's only so much you can do.
• 17:53
  Chris Herlinger: You have only limited time to talk to people. And of course, I don't speak Ukrainian, so I was using Sister Lucia's very good translation skills to talk to people. I would say nearly everyone I spoke to was Orthodox, right? And the sisters are Catholic, but at that moment, none of those differences of church identity meant anything at all.
• 18:23
  Eddie Rester: Right.
• 18:24
  Chris Herlinger: The presence of the church, the presence of Christ, if you want to term it that way, was there through the sisters. And so that was a very, very deeply touching connection.
• 18:40
  Chris Herlinger: And one other story from the book. There, my very first assignment to this part of the world, that part of the world, was right after the full scale invasion began. I didn't go into Ukraine at first. That had to wait until November of 2022, but in February and March, I was in Poland, and I spoke to a lot of refugees, and met a woman, Svetlana, who is featured very prominently in the book. She is a Catholic, and came from an eastern city that was bombarded, and she and her daughter fled, like a lot of people fled, and she ended up in Krakow, and was being sponsored by a group of Dominican Sisters.
• 19:35
  Chris Herlinger: And in my successive journeys to that part of the world you know, you still cannot go directly into Ukraine, right? You can't fly into Ukraine. You have to go primarily by train. For me, it's always been through Poland, which is, it's a very arduous trip. I think President. Biden made the same trip this year. He was also on a train. And, yeah, so she had to leave. They came to Krakow, she and her daughter.
• 20:16
  Chris Herlinger: Dominican Sisters put her up and I saw Svetlana a number of times in Krakow, just to sort of check on her and just see how she was doing and how her own story was progressing. I saw her a couple times. You know, bit by bit, she was, things were improving for her. She was, the last time I saw her, she was still at the at the house that the Dominicans had hosted for her, and she was working as a house cleaner. This is what, of course, a lot of the Ukrainian women in Poland have been doing. She was learning Polish bit by bit, and she was continuing her theological study. She had started theological studies online when she was in Ukraine. So she was finishing that.
• 21:09
  Chris Herlinger: The last time I was in Poland, I found out that she had left the the residence where she was living, and I lost touch with her, but I took it as a good sign that she now had established herself enough that she could be on her own, in her own house, apartment, I assume, in Krakow, and was just starting to make a go of it. So she still, when I met her, her hope was--this was, I think, in March of 2022--she was hoping that she would return. You know, the war would be over. She and her daughter could go back in, let's say, two or three months. Well, the war continues, and I don't think there's any definite time about when she will be going back. It's certainly still her hope that that'll happen. And her daughter, just a footnote, her daughter did return. Her daughter was a member of the military and decided she couldn't, in good conscience, not not be in Ukraine anymore, so she returned to Ukraine and rejoined the military.
• 22:26
  Eddie Rester: I've got a friend from Poland, and he lives in the United States, but goes home several times a year, and he just talks about the refugees, and how many of them are like her daughter, just feel this pull to go home, even if it's not all safe yet or all secure, just being gone for so long from someone's home, just painful for a lot of the refugees that he meets and encounters in Poland.
• 22:53
  Chris Herlinger: Yeah, yeah. I actually just to say, I have...
• 22:58
  Chris Herlinger: This is part of this, how the story has developed. Late last year, I was actually on assignment in Croatia and Bosnia and met some in Croatia, met some refugees from Ukraine: a family, a mother and two or three daughters, and they they had returned to to see their father and go back. So there is some movement. There is some movement. They still, the mother and daughter still returned to Croatia. They still didn't feel fully secure, but they did go back to see their father. And so some of that dynamic is happening.
• 23:52
  Chris Herlinger: Men of a certain age cannot leave Ukraine at least, at least legally. And there's this whole issue of conscription and being of draft age, etc. So that's why most of the refugees I met in Poland were women, women and children, very, very few men.
• 24:18
  Chris McAlilly: It does feel very much like some of the forces that brought together the UN and kind of the world order that coalesced in the wake of the World Wars, so from, like the 1950s forward, it does feel to me like there's just a destabilization of kind of that world order and insecurity that people feel, especially in some of these war-torn areas. I wonder for you, why is it important to tell stories of solidarity in the face of that destabilization?
• 25:05
  Chris Herlinger: Well, let me just read. Just so we're all clear on the title of my book, how I define solidarity, that's finding unity and a common experience of displacement amid war. And mercy, finding compassion rooted in the Gospel mandate to comfort the afflicted, feed the hungry, offer shelter to those who have lost their homes. I think speaking to Ukrainians, and I'm in touch with a number of sisters in Ukraine and non-sister friends who I've met along the way. I think that that solidarity by, let's say, by Americans, even the smallest of gestures, just remembering that there was a war in Ukraine right now. And I think that that, I think Ukrainians really appreciate that, that people elsewhere in the world are thinking of them.
• 26:13
  Chris Herlinger: You know, there was a massive show of support for the Ukrainians after February 2022, you know, the world really united around Ukraine, and obviously now, two and a half years later, going on three, this war drags on. It's, as we know, it's become a political issue here in the US. There are questions about whether the US should continue aid. Certainly, many Ukrainians feel that they're grateful for what the US has done, but they feel like maybe there hasn't been quite enough, at least in terms of military support. But I think that that humanitarian support, which was in the billions of dollars, was a solid sign of solidarity. And I think Ukrainians really, really appreciated it.
• 27:05
  Eddie Rester: When you mentioned your understanding of mercy, how is that unfolding over time? You know, one of the things I worry about when people face hardship over time is they get hardened, or they get... It's hard to say more self-centered, but less other-focused. Maybe I should say it that way. As you've been engaged in this story over time, how is mercy continuing? Are new forces coming alongside, or where's that coming from? How is that being sustained?
• 27:41
  Chris Herlinger: Well, you know, there are people who are, there are groups that continue their work. You know, again, the sisters, for example, and I think the wider church has continued that assistance.
• 27:54
  Chris Herlinger: Obviously, when an event like this drags on and on and on, it is harder to sustain that. And you've probably heard that term, what is it? Now I'm not forgetting the term. Is it compassion fatigue?
• 28:12
  Eddie Rester: Compassion fatigue, yeah. That's it.
• 28:14
  Chris Herlinger: Yeah, compassion fatigue. I mean, probably the very, very best example of that is not Ukraine, but Haiti, a country I've been to a number of times, and a country I dearly love. Although I can't go back now, just because that that is an extremely perilous and unsafe environment to be in. But, you know, there's been million, probably billions, of dollars spent by the US, by humanitarian groups, and yet the situation there has just only worsened with these gangs taking over the large urban areas. And so I think US supporters of Haiti, people who've given money, I think, have questioned, have said, well, I mean, "What good is this doing? We've tried to help 80 for years, and nothing seems to stick." I mean, in response to that, I would say what you're saying is understandable and yet if it were not for humanitarian groups, and was not for the continued assistance that people have given, the situation would be far, far worse for the people in Haiti. So I mean, Eddie, to answer your question. I think aid continues. Humanitarian aid continues, but again going on, as we approach the three-year mark of this war, yeah, it is hard. It is hard to sustain. And in our US context, this crazy media environment that we find ourselves in, we jump from one event to the next. I mean, in early 2022 it was easy to foster support for Ukraine among people in the US. And now almost three years later, it is harder. It is harder to sustain that.
• 30:19
  Chris Herlinger: Having said that, I just, I know that, I think it's next week, there's a benefit concert at Carnegie Hall that's going to benefit Ukrainian children. So there are still pockets of support and pockets of people who know that supporting Ukraine is still important, but it is difficult, particularly in this media environment that we live in.
• 30:43
  Chris McAlilly: I wonder if you could speak to, through your world travel. You know, we talked a little bit about kind of the way in which storytelling leads to compassion. It can lead to solidarity. It can lead to a sense of hope. But I also... The reality of reporting in some of these areas. I'm sure there have been moments where you've been faced with real, true despair and difficulty. I wonder if you could maybe speak to that dimension and then how you develop resilience as a reporter, to kind of navigate seeing some of the harder dimensions of the human experience.
• 31:30
  Chris Herlinger: Well, I mean, for myself, I guess, because I've had enough experience, I sort of know what to expect in these situations. All these situations are, I mean, they're all different. They all have different dimensions. When I've been in situations in Africa, for example, I found myself in refugee camps, and that's where people end up. In Poland there were no such things as refugee camps. You know, people were being housed in shopping malls, vacated shopping malls, for maybe a week at the most. But there... Enough Ukrainians had connections throughout Europe. I mean, there's a, I forget the number, but there's a massive number of Ukrainians who are living in Europe. So people had connections, and they could go places. So there was no need for refugee camps.
• 32:30
  Chris Herlinger: Which is not to say that the people were not despairing, you know. People were still in shock, you know. And it's not an easy thing to leave your country and to just be uprooted. And, um, so, I mean, yes, I've seen a lot of that, and I've seen, I think, more sort of shell shock than I've seen what I would call despair. I think what I remember most from all of these experiences I've had is the resilience of people, and that's what sticks in my memory most is just the way in which people who have gone through such torture and such hell have found the inner resources. And they've had help along the way, from people like the sisters, or from humanitarian groups, both church-based and non church-based. And I do think that those small gestures of getting to a place and finding food, finding kindness just mean so much to people who are facing these situations.
• 33:54
  Eddie Rester: In the excerpt that I read earlier, there's a place in it, and I was just looking at it, trying to find it again, where I think that one of the women was talking about going into a basement with 20 people for this extended period of time, and it just talked about how, I can't remember the phrase that you use, but just kind of bound together by the suffering, or by the hardship there. And I think that that is one of the things that God, how God wired humans, is that when we suffer, our suffering is made manageable by others who are in it with us.
• 34:34
  Eddie Rester: And I would imagine, whether it's in Haiti or Darfur, or wherever you've been, the Ukraine, that you get to see kind of how not just individuals survive, but that groups, maybe even groups that never would have been together before, begin to coalesce and begin to figure out next steps together. Any examples of that, particularly, I guess maybe in Ukrainewhere you've seen or experienced, where people just have kind of pulled together unexpectedly in order to help one another make it through?
• 35:12
  Unknown: Yeah, I think, Eddie, I think the example you're citing, is that a group found, I think there were a couple instances in the book where I talked about this, but, yeah, people of different faiths, coming together, not out of any plan, but they just found themselves in these terrifically bad situations. And I think they, Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, finding themselves pitted in these situations. And they, I think they found they found their common humanity, and were, you know, just in survival mode, but they did find that common humanity, and I think that that was and is very, very important.
• 36:12
  Chris Herlinger: Ukraine is a, again, predominantly Orthodox, but it's had more of a liberal tradition of interfaith relations. And of course, Ukraine has a Jewish president, and there's a small Ukrainian Jewish population, not enough to elect a president on their own, you know, but there's been religious pluralism there, and it's been respected. So all these situations are different in a way. I mean, they all have different dynamics.
• 36:48
  Chris Herlinger: Just anecdotally, I mean, one sort of quirky thing that was so interesting being in Poland was being again in these shopping areas, abandoned shopping areas that were being used as shelter for the refugees. What was fascinating was just how so many people had pets, had cats and dogs. And that was something I had never seen in in other contexts, you know. And so that was, I mean, that was interesting. I mean, I don't want to underplay what the Ukrainians went through, but going into Poland was not, I think, quite as dire as situations I've seen. Let's say, in Africa, where people do end up in displacement camps, and the conditions are not terribly inviting, but, again, I don't want to undermine the difficult and the horror that people have to experience when they leave their homes.
• 37:59
  Chris McAlilly: You end the book telling some stories of displacement, but also new home and maybe a renewed sense of hope. And you tell a story of a 17-year-old named Ivan and his friend, 14-year-old named Alyssa. I wonder if you could maybe share a little bit of their story.
• 38:24
  Chris Herlinger: Yeah, they were, well, the girl was, she was... She didn't really figure in the interview. She and Ivan, how he pronounced his name, Ivan, were friends. And I didn't really get much from Eliza. She was, she didn't really want to be interviewed, but Ivan was, he was, he was a 17-year-old guy, and very, very eager to talk.
• 38:57
  Chris Herlinger: And yeah, he had a story to tell about being in occupied Ukraine, which, I mean, this is the Ukrainian area that was being occupied by the Russians. And he and his family faced some really, really difficult situations. And you know, I mean, families are families, and there were inner family dynamics that he had to deal with. He, his father actually was more or less supporting the Russian invasion. And his mother, he and his mother, of course, were not fans of this. And so they had to go. They had to make a decision about when they were going to leave.
• 39:52
  Chris Herlinger: And so they ended up leaving, and they ended up in Zaporizhzhia. And so Ivan found a, not literally, a home. He was living with his mother, but found a community at this convent where Sister Lucia and others were hosting them, and I had several meals with them all, and he was, you know, Ivan was, he was in a situation where he was very relieved that he and his mom had left occupied Ukraine and were free of Russian domination. But while they were there, I mean, it was a horrific situation, and there were killings going on, and, you know what's pretty clear to human rights violations by Russians against civilians in these in these occupied areas.
• 40:52
  Chris Herlinger: Anyway, Ivan was catching up with school, and was going to be returning to school, I think, this fall, but had you know, his life was turned upside down. And so what he would end up doing, I remember he said he wanted to be an actor, so that probably meant that he would have to go to to the capital Kyiv to establish himself. And he was very relieved to be out of that really hostile situation with the Russians, and became, he said, I mean, he was baptized and grew up Orthodox, but he said that he now considers himself Catholic because of the home he felt that he had with the sisters and other community members.
• 41:49
  Chris Herlinger: So there's always, there are always those examples of people finding people, finding new lives in these situations. But it's not an easy thing to leave your old your old home, your old ways. And people are, I think, hardwired to be in a certain place. And so when you find yourself in a situation where you feel you have to leave, that's not a pleasant situation.
• 42:20
  Chris Herlinger: I think it's easier when you're younger. He's 17, I think he'll be able to make a go of it. But it's in the story that ran todayin Global Sisters report about two older women who found themselves displaced. One was in her 80s. Obviously, when you're older, that kind of displacement is just much, much tougher to endure.
• 42:44
  Eddie Rester: Chris, I want to thank you for telling these stories, because we see the stories on the news, but I think what you're helping us do is push a little deeper into seeing where God's goodness is emerging, even in places of war, even stories of death and devastation. So I just appreciate you taking some time with us today. Chris' book, I encourage you to pick up a copy of it, "Solidary and Mercy: the Power of Christian Humanitarian Efforts in Ukraine." So Chris, thank you for your time with us today.
• 43:15
  Chris Herlinger: Okay. Really enjoyed being with you, too.
• 43:17
  Eddie Rester: [OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
• 43:26
  Chris McAlilly: If you would like to support this work financially, or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]