To the haunting chants of a church choir in Kyiv's 11th century Saint Sophia Cathedral, the first group of chaplains to join the Ukrainian military's command structure graduated in a ceremony Saturday.
Although chaplains have ministered to Ukraine’s armed forces for years, they worked as embedded civilians rather than as officers. Now, they will sign contracts to serve in those armed forces, undergo a six-week training program and get inducted.
“We had intense psychological training, military training,” Gennadiy Rohmanenko, who was among the graduates who received the rank of junior lieutenant, said. “It means that we can put together church duty and military duty. The motto of chaplains is ‘Being there,’ God’s presence in the army. This is the mission of the chaplain.”
The 30 chaplains who went through the first training came from five religious organizations: the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, the Ukrainian Evangelical Church, the All-Ukrainian Union of Evangelical Christian-Baptist Churches and the interdenominational Council of Christian Churches and Religious Organizations.Rohmanenko has worked as an army chaplain since 2014, initially as a volunteer and then as an embedded civilian, so he knows what the mission requires.
“In the rear of the battle, military operations, a person sometimes loses his bearings,” he said. “Therefore, the most difficult thing for a soldier in battle is to remain human. So chaplains need to do everything to save a soldier’s soul after their combat duties.”
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