Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla
The images from Bucha and now from other villages outside of Kyiv that show the terrible slaughter of Ukrainian civilians of all ages by the departing Russian army are indeed difficult to look upon. I suspect that there were similar images to be seen after the Russian destruction of parts of Syria, but we did not pay attention to those atrocities because that area of the world does not resonate very much with us. But Ukraine is part of Europe, and for all of our ambivalent feelings towards Europe, that is where most Americans come from. For most Americans today, Europe is a place to go to see beautiful things and to eat wonderful food. There are few left today with the memory of World War II and what Europe looked like after the terrible devastation of that war. Even the memory of the Cold War has faded—but perhaps that memory has been jolted by the war in Ukraine.
The bodies of the men, women and children lying dead in the streets of the villages north of Kyiv are shown in the news footage, some with their hands tied behind their backs, some facing upward with bullet-ridden bodies. But in all these photos, the victims’ faces are blurred out. This is out of respect, for the face and the eyes of a person are the signs of the identity of a person, the sign of what it means to be a man or woman in the image of God, and the eyes are a window to the soul. Even in an age in which social violence is accepted as part of the contemporary scene, these images strike deeply the cords of human compassion.
