FOR the Anglicans of Kyiv, Monday evening was a rare opportunity to meet a Church of England priest. That the cleric in question was the Archbishop of Canterbury was just a bonus.
The Anglican chaplaincy has been without a regular priest since 2007, receiving a visit only a few times a year for major festivals. After the full-scale invasion began, these visits, too, were paused.
The congregation was also severely depleted in those first days of the invasion: most expats left, and many Ukrainians either left the country or moved out of the capital.
Two years on, the numbers have recovered a little, with the return of embassy staff and businesses to Ukraine, but the chaplaincy — under the diocese in Europe — is still without a regular priest. The services are led by the churchwarden, Christina Laschenko.
Her daughter, Margot Stafiichuk, is one of the stalwarts of Christ Church, Kyiv. Like many members of the congregation, she is lot a lifelong Anglican, but came to the Anglican church through a combination of happenstance and convenience, and stayed because she had found a home.
She was baptised in the Swiss Reformed Church, and confirmed in the German Lutheran Church, the denomination that owns the building in which the Anglicans meet. She attended the Anglican Sunday school, and then she, with her family, became committed members of the congregation.
Explaining the denomination that she now belonged to was not always easy, but more because of incomprehension than any hostility, she said. She recalls a time in school when, after telling a classmate that she was a Protestant, they misheard and asked: “So, are you protesting?”
On Monday evening, Archbishop Welby spent time with members of the congregation over a meal of traditional Ukrainian food. Afterwards, he reflected: “I am struck by the faithfulness of the group of Anglicans here, by the need to pray for them, and to support them as they keep the church going, looking to the wider diocese and Communion for support and encouragement.”
Dushy, a Red Cross worker from Sri Lanka, has been in Kyiv for a year. She grew up in Colombo, worshipping in the Church of Ceylon. In every new country to which she is posted, the first thing that she does is try to find the local Anglican community. But she had not been holding out much hope of finding fellow Anglicans in war-torn Eastern Europe. “I was pleasantly surprised,” she said.
Svitlana, a Ukrainian piano teacher, who plays the organ for the Anglican service, grew up in the Orthodox Church. Twenty years ago, she was asked to help out with Sunday school, and then to play the organ, and “slowly, slowly, step by step”, became an Anglican.
She did not leave Kyiv at the outbreak of the full-scale invasion in February 2022, but stayed, instead, with her sick mother, sounding a note of defiance. “I’ve had many propositions to leave, but this is my land: why should I leave?”
Kyiv is under constant threat of missile and drone attacks, and a heavy barrage on 29 December killed more than 30 people in the capital. Svitlana was stoical about the danger: “It’s life; it’s our life now,” she said, and explained that sometimes, instead of going to a shelter when the alarms sounded, she had a shower and got into bed. “Only faith will save us,” she says.
The expat community is more itinerant than the Ukrainian core of the church. Mark, who works at the US embassy, is a Lutheran, but there is no English Lutheran community in Kyiv, and so the Anglican church presents an accessible option. Chris, who works at the UK embassy, is in a similar position, although his upbringing was in the Methodist Church.