ODESSA – There was no mass at midnight, no candles were lit in anticipation of the Resurrection, the night vigil that precedes Orthodox Easter. Not here, not in Bucha, and in any Ukrainian church no Pope was able to celebrate the feast properly. It’s too dangerous, and there’s a curfew everywhere. So, early in the morning, the first faithful arrive at the Cathedral of the Transfiguration, with the basket of bread and eggs to be blessed, in the great white and gold temple, the candelabra sparkling with lights, the saints painted on the walls. It was an Easter of mourning, stained forever by the blood of the eight dead on Saturday, killed by Kalibr missiles fired from the Caspian Sea on Odessa. And other victims were in Kharkiv, and two children died in Donetsk, and others in Mariupol still beaten by the bombings. The truce even invoked by Pope francesco there was no, it was a day almost the same as the others, including sirens.
The city now feels besieged, the Russians have deployed 20 ships and submarines with cruise missiles in the Black Sea. Someone went for a little walk in the park overlooking the harbor, from there you can see the open sea, from there comes the first threat. And missiles are fear number one, sometimes intercepted by anti-aircraft, sometimes not, just like it happened the other day. Six shot, two annihilated in the sky, two on undefined military targets, two on apartment buildings. And on the fourth floor of the affected building in the Vuzivskiy district, lived the Glodan family. Yuriwho is a chef and pastry chef, his wife Valeriathe daughter Kira 3 months. Hosted in the apartment of Valeria’s mother, because their house is too close to the airport, and therefore they had thought of moving to the center.
The Kalibr hit the condominium, breaking through many apartments, and in the eight current deaths there are the child Kira, the mother Valeria, the grandmother. Yuri was saved because he had just gone down to buy something in the shop on the corner. The terrible crash forced him and everyone on the street to seek shelter, then look up at the house. Valeria was born in Kherson, a city now conquered by the Russians. She worked as a pierre for some companies in Odessa, an ancient and modern city where young people love to live, full of bars and shops mostly closed, for two months. “My life has changed, I have reached a new level of happiness”, she had written as soon as her daughter was born. She was a month away from the war, everyone was still happy. Worried, but still happy.
Odessa bombed: rockets in the sky and buildings hit
Yuri Yuri said goodbye with some photos, her hand enclosing Kira’s tiny hand, and Valeria pregnant, Valeria smiling with her daughter resting on her lap. “Now you are in the kingdom of heaven, and you will always be in our hearts,” she wrote. And how many other young women like Valeria, yesterday morning went to the cathedral for the blessing, kneeling in front of the ancient icons, black faces framed by the silver of centuries ago. It was a sad morning, with the priest who poured holy water on traditional baskets, on women and men distressed by a war that never ends, on sad children. There was no joy when the Pope pronounced “Christòs voskrés”, God is risen. The queue in front of the image of the archangel Michael, with the flaming sword, and kissing the small altars of devotion. Then another alarm went off and everyone went home.