Sick - In Recovery

Rev. Winnie Bolle, Domenica Brazzi, Doris Gray, Frederick Kent, Griselda Ogburn, George Pearson, Rev. James Considine, Bill Berger, Rev. Errol Harvey, Helen Ebanks, Tim Royer, Canon Dr. Gervaise Clarke, Angela Fekete, Jhon Cuervo, Sarah VanAntwerp, Giovany Monzalve

Altar Flowers

Thanksgiving for the Soto family by Roberto Soto



Adrian Madriz

Senior Warden of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. Adrian is the youngest and first Nicaraguan/Venezuelan Senior Warden, and the first Warden to come from the Spanish language service in Trinity’s 126 year history. He is the Executive Director of Struggle for Miami’s Affordable and Sustainable Housing (SMASH). Adrian is a community organizer who has been working in the neighborhoods of Miami most affected by slumlords and gentrification. In 2015, he was inspired by community leader Trenise Bryant and he and his neighbors started the organization SMASH in order to generate solutions to slum and blight without gentrifying the neighborhood. SMASH is a Community Land Trust and is developing its first affordable housing project in Liberty City. He has a BA in Political Science and Screen Arts from the University of Michigan. Adrian believes that the church has a role to play as the temple of the community’s values, and he believes that Trinity can once again be the center of Miami life, the way it was when Miami founder Julia Tuttle attended the church in the 1800s. He lives in Overtown with his husband, Armando Carranza.

Favorite Bible Verse: Romans 13:8 - Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,”[a] and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”[b] Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

We meet online to pray for Ukraine: Kyiv's Anglican spread across Europe continue to meet

The Church of England News

Before Russia's invasion, Kyiv had a small but thriving community of Anglicans. Today, members of Christ Church, which used to meet in the German Lutheran church Kyiv's centre, come together to pray for peace online.

"We try to keep in touch via [the messaging apps] Viber or WhatsApp," explained church warden Christina Laschenko-Stafiychuk.

"We also try to join Zoom vigil services on Wednesday evenings held by the Diocese in Europe during Lent to pray for Ukraine."

Since the Russian invasion which began on February 24th, the once vibrant community has been scattered across Europe. 

Christina said: "My daughter and I left Kyiv on March 4th. We left on an evacuation train going towards Lviv.

"We then took a train to Chełm in Poland, then on to Warsaw, and finally to Zurich."

The pair are safe, but her husband has remained in Ukraine.

"My husband is officially a volunteer in the Second Reserves, but due to the sufficient number of volunteers he was not summoned yet," she explained.

As Russian forces apparently pull back from around Kyiv, congregants are said to be safer. Yet, Christina said: "The whole territory of Ukraine is within the range of missiles, and shelling of critical infrastructure continue."

It has been confirmed that the German Lutheran church remains untouched by war damage. 

Anglicans across the world have come together in prayer and are raising funds for both Ukrainians fleeing war and those staying behind. 

Church of England guidance has been published for parishes within England to support refugees in communities and last week the Church of England joined other churches in Britain and Ireland for a Day of Prayer for peace in Ukraine. 

Christina said: "Anglicans are doing so much. They pray - I have been told about continuous prayer for Ukraine and its people. 

"And special funds for refugees have been set up, and many Anglican friends across Europe are opening their homes to Ukrainians."

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have condemned the Russian invasion. 

In a joint statement they said: “The horrific and unprovoked attack on Ukraine is an act of great evil. 

"Placing our trust in Jesus Christ, the author of peace, we pray for an urgent ceasefire and a withdrawal of Russian forces."

Christina has encouraged Anglicans to continue to pray for peace in Ukraine this Easter. 

Among Russian Orthodox, glimmers of dissent against the invasion of Ukraine

Religion News

More than 275 Russian Orthodox priests and deacons from around the world have signed an open letter expressing their opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, challenging the Russian government and breaking with the tacit support of the military action by church leadership in Moscow.

The letter called for “the cessation of the fratricidal war” against Ukraine, insisted the “people of Ukraine should make their choice on their own” and lamented the “trial that our brothers and sisters in Ukraine were undeservedly subjected to.”

“The Last Judgment awaits every person,” reads an automated translation of the letter. “No earthly authority, no doctors, no guards will protect from this judgment. … We remind you that the Blood of Christ, shed by the Savior for the life of the world, will be received in the sacrament of Communion by those people who give murderous orders, not into life, but into eternal torment.”

The Russian church has a long history in Ukraine, but in 2019 Patriarch Bartholomew I, the Greek Orthodox primate, defied Kirill and recognized a new, independent Orthodox body in Ukraine that broke away from the Moscow-based church. In an interview this week with CNN Turk, Bartholomew said recognizing the new branch made him a “target” of the Russian Patriarchate.

But the priests’ letter showed Russia’s invasion has further challenged Moscow’s leadership. While their protest is qualified and the number of signers tiny compared to the total number of clerics (church authorities estimated roughly 40,000 operated within the church as of 2009), it points to a broader trend of dissent within the church regarding the Ukraine invasion, and could signal important shifts for a tradition that has in recent years operated in lockstep with the Kremlin.

Wives of soldiers in Mariupol ask Pope to help save their husbands

Catholic News Agency



The young wife of the commander of the Ukrainian battalion still holed up in a steel plant in Mariupol had what she described as a “heart raising” encounter with Pope Francis.

Kateryna Prokopenko, wife of Azov Regiment commander Denys Prokopenko, and Yulya Fedosiuk, wife of Azov soldier Arseniy Fedosiuk, met Pope Francis May 11 at the end of his weekly general audience. Both women are in their 20s.

The women are in almost constant contact with the wives of about 500 of the estimated 2,000 soldiers still believed to be inside the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.

“We hope this meeting will give us a chance to save their lives, actually,” Prokopenko told reporters in English after meeting the pope. “Our soldiers are ready to be evacuated to a third country.”

The group of wives includes widows whose husbands’ dead bodies have yet to be recovered and who are pleading for international help so they can give their husbands a Christian burial, Fedosiuk said.

She said they told the pope that an estimated 700 soldiers inside the steel mill are injured; “they have gangrene, amputations; their flesh is rotting.”

As the women were talking to the pope, they said, “he held our hands.”

“He told us he is praying for us, and he is doing everything” he can to push for the complete evacuation of the plant, Fedosiuk said. Denys Prokopenko had announced May 8 that all the civilians who had been sheltering at Azovstal had been evacuated, but later, reports emerged that some civilians still were inside the miles of tunnels under the plants.

“We asked him to come to Ukraine,” Fedosiuk said, and they asked him “to talk to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to tell him to let them go.”

Prokopenko said she spoke to her husband the night before meeting the pope. “He told me that he loves me, and I answered that I love him, too, and I say, ‘Just know we’ll do anything to save you.'”

“We will do anything to save them all in the Azovstal plant,” she said.

Food, water and medical supplies inside the plant are scarce, she said, and a Russian bomb destroyed the medical clinic, killing many soldiers and hastening the death of others.

Fedosiuk told reporters, “My husband wrote to me two days ago and he asked me to find an article about how to live without water as long as it is possible.”

An evacuation to a third country is essential, Prokopenko said. None of the soldiers will surrender to Russian troops and face the likelihood of being shot, tortured or taken to “a concentration camp in Russia.”

What is needed, she said, is “a strong diplomatic coalition that will push Putin to let them go” to a third country.

They said they will follow their husbands to a third country, if possible, “and then we hope to go to Kyiv, of course, because it is our country,” Prokopenko said. “We don’t want to be refugees; we just want to live in our country, build our country.”

The Vatican chooses the time for Pope's visit to Ukraine

Religious Information Service of Ukraine



The Vatican is considering an invitation to the Pope to visit Ukraine and choosing the right moment when the visit can be most effective.

This was announced by the ambassador of Ukraine to the Vatican Andriy Yurash on the air of the national telethon, Ukrinform reports.

Commenting on the resumption by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of invitations to the pope to visit Ukraine, the diplomat noted that they had previously been received from the president and Prime Minister of Ukraine, as well as from the leaders of the Roman and Greek Catholic churches in Ukraine.

"The basic thesis (of the Vatican – ed.) – we are considering, we understand the weight and want to implement this visit at a time when we can expect to receive the most significant positive result," Yurash said.

He suggested that now the Pope's visit to Ukraine is one of the most important issues on the agenda in the capital of the Holy See.

"I really want to hope that a balanced, obvious decision will be made in a week or two," the Ukrainian ambassador to the Vatican said.

As reported, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine said on May 3 that Ukraine, unlike Russia, confirms its commitment to dialogue and once again resumes the invitation to the pope to pay a visit to Kyiv.