Before he entered the Lluis Companys Olympic Stadium in Barcelona to greet 40,000 young people this evening, Pope Leo got out of his car to greet the dynamic Lucía Caram, O.P., an Argentine nun living in Spain, and bless the 21 ambulances, one pickup truck and nine other vehicles that she and her team have collected to be taken to war-torn Ukraine.
He spent almost 15 minutes there, first greeting Sister Lucía and two other sisters from her community near Manresa. He then blessed the cars and the ambulances one by one, sprinkling them with Holy Water. Afterward, he greeted many of the people who work closely with her, as well as members of the board of the foundation she set up to oversee her humanitarian effort, including the famous Chilean abuse survivor, Juan Carlos Cruz. Leo also had his photo taken with them.
Sister Lucía, who is now on the road to Ukraine, said in an audio message sent to America and some other media at our request: “He was very warm and very close. He thanked me for letting him bless the ambulances. I told him that it was very important to bring the situation in Ukraine to the world’s attention, to focus on Ukraine. He told me it was an issue that worried him a lot. I said that people needed to hear him speak about Ukraine, and he said that peace really is under threat and to convey my closeness and friendship to them [in Ukraine].”
She said they gave him a sealed box containing a Ukrainian flag, called the “victory box,” and when the war ends, it can be opened and the flag unfurled. They also gave him a crocheted nun made by Ukrainian women and a doll made by the women in the foundation’s workshops, which is of the pope. The Argentines gave him a flag that says, “We choose peace and goodness,” signed by the 10 Argentines who were in the convoy, and he blessed them.
Immediately after receiving the pope’s blessing, Sister Lucia set off for Ukraine with the ambulances and more than 60 drivers—two for each ambulance or vehicle—and a dozen volunteers. On June 12, they will cross the border into Ukraine, which is under heavy Russian fire.
“I believe Leo is engaged and concerned, and the fact that he is blessing a humanitarian corridor at the moment Ukraine is living through, I think that is bringing the focus back to Ukraine when the world has forgotten about Ukraine and when they are truly at their worst moment,” Sister Lucia told America in a phone interview on the eve of the pope’s visit.
Immediately after receiving the pope’s blessing, Sister Lucia will set off for Ukraine with the ambulances and more than 60 drivers—two for each ambulance—and a dozen volunteers. On June 12, they will arrive at the border and enter the country, which is under heavy Russian fire.
She has met Pope Leo twice since his election on May 8, 2005, and, like Pope Francis, whom she met on 17 occasions, he supports the work she is doing.
Sister Lucía is a contemplative Dominican living in a community in Manresa, outside Barcelona. Her work is very much in the spirit of Pope Francis. She has extraordinary organizing skills and is well known in Spain for her assistance to refugees and combating child poverty. She is a fan of Barcelona’s soccer team, and knew their former star player, Lionel Messi, who supported her work while he was there.
“For me, the fact that Francis supported me, I think it goes back to the first trip I was making to Ukraine, when I was listening to his messages in which he said it was necessary to open humanitarian corridors. I didn’t know what a humanitarian corridor was. I think I learned how to run a humanitarian corridor by listening to him, and by asking, and by taking it one step at a time as circumstances unfolded,” she said.
“When Pope Leo was elected, I could see he was very concerned about Ukraine, too. I believe he already knew what we were doing for Ukraine and knew of our connection with Francis. I think Francis was the link between us and Ukraine. When Leo learned what Pope Francis had been doing, he told me to count on him for the rosaries [like Francis, who gave her many rosaries to take to Ukraine].”
“Pope Leo is sending rosaries, too. I wrote to him on April 9, asking whether he might be willing to bless the humanitarian corridor. The next day, on the 10th, he replied that he had already given the order for it to be included in the program. I see he is genuinely concerned about Ukraine.”
This is Sister Lucia’s 51st humanitarian journey to Ukraine since the Russian invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. She has already taken 200 ambulances to Ukraine, she said, thanks to the great generosity of people in Barcelona and other places who contribute to her extraordinary effort.
Sister Lucia has also set up 44 humanitarian corridors that enabled her to bring some 150 wounded soldiers from the front lines in Ukraine to Spain and arranged for their rehabilitation in hospitals in Barcelona and elsewhere.
Moreover, she has established field hospitals to provide wounded soldiers with rapid, often life-saving treatment near the front lines.
Deeply concerned about the plight of children living under bombing or the threat of bombing in Ukraine, she has also brought 255 children to Barcelona for holidays.
She has been close to the war front on several occasions and brought humanitarian aid to Kharkiv, Odesa and Izmail. She has also been to the Chernobyl exclusion zone and close to the border with Belarus.
“That’s where we felt the war a bit more directly because everything is mined. There is the radiation issue, too; the bridges are all rigged with explosives underneath, and all along the road. That was more intense.”
Asked how she got the 33 ambulances, Sister Lucia told America: “First, I ask a lot through social media, and people come on board. Some make very small donations, from €1 upward to buying an entire ambulance. In one case, for example, I bought an ambulance while doing a live interview on television from Odesa in the middle of an attack; people started donating, and I was able to buy an ambulance with that money. And then I have business donors who donate ambulances. I would say about 50 percent of the ambulances have been purchased by businesses.”
When I suggested that her humanitarian project “has become almost a popular charitable work,” she replied: “Yes, without a doubt. We calculated that over these four years, some 15,000 people have contributed to the humanitarian corridors, with small and large donations alike.”
“We also receive a lot of in-kind donations,” she said. “For example, on this trip, we’re bringing 200 generators that have also been purchased by individuals who rallied together. There’s a young boy with Down syndrome who broke his piggy bank—he wanted to help us buy sleeping bags, and in the end, he decided to buy a generator. He gave his father everything he had and bought a generator that cost €1,400.”
“Then there are schools that organize things. For instance, at Christmas, young Ukrainian [refugees] went from house to house singing Christmas carols, collected money and also bought generators. People just keep giving,” she said.
Asked how she sees the war today, Sister Lucia said: “I see it getting worse and worse. I see that people are very tired.” She also noted that there has been a change in strategy on the Ukrainian side over the last six months, with Ukraine now hitting Russian infrastructure and civilian populations. “This is generating a great deal of unrest in Russia at a moment of weakness, and what has happened is that it has provoked the beast,” she said. “Putin at this point is unhinged.”
Then there is the other major issue, she said: the children who are abducted from Ukraine and taken into Russia. “Very few have been recovered,” she said. Sister Lucia said she has spoken with the Human Rights Commissioner in Ukraine about this and will do so again on this trip.
I suggested that clearly the Russians are aware of what she is doing and asked, “Aren’t you afraid they might strike your operation?” She responded by telling me that on one of her humanitarian missions in May 2022, she brought in 15 ambulances, and the following day, they were making a second entry with more ambulances that they left at the border. “But we could only hand them over at the border and not go further because there had been an attempted attack on the place where we’d left the first set of ambulances,” she said. “But the Ukrainians had managed to abort the attack. So [the Russians] knew.”
But, she concluded, “I don’t feel threatened or afraid of that. We do our work and trust in God.”
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