Gustave Flaubert's prose reflects a lifetime of grappling with religious and spiritual themes. He saw his Catholicism as a singular form of asceticism, allied to his vocation as a writer.

Sigrid Undset wrote the famous “Kristin Lavransdatter” trilogy and won the Nobel Prize. She also was a sometime contributor to America during the Second World War after the Nazi invasion of Norway had forced her into exile.

Witnessing the level and scale of violence throughout these past days, I still can’t understand its source—violence without reason, senseless cruelty.

The war is not about Russia capturing Ukraine; it is about Russia challenging the Western world, which Mr. Putin and Patriarch Kirill both regard as evil.

Two million people have already fled Ukraine, many to European nations that resisted accepting refugees from the Middle East. Will this new crisis force a reckoning on the treatment of all displaced persons?

Of the many things my dad passed on to his children, a reverence for our Ukrainian identity and the strong faith and spirituality that it nurtured in us is his greatest legacy.