Angelus News | March 25, 2022 | Vol. 7 No. 6

Sisters of the Servants of
shelter displaced
Mary Immaculate order
families who
in Poland help refugees
are on their way
at their convent. | FAto
becoming
THER JASON CHARRON
refugees. Tymo’s
wife, an art historian,
is working
with a Swiss organization to protect
cultural treasures. Their oldest son,
20, is collecting nonlethal supplies
for Ukrainian troops — a project for
which Tymo’s videos raise money.
“Everything is badly needed and
every dollar converts to a saved life or
a protected life,” Tymo said.
The next two eldest are Girl Scouts,
who volunteer at improvised transit
shelters for displaced persons.
Lviv is ordinarily a loud, happy city,
popular with tourists. Initially after the
Feb. 24 invasion it was unnaturally
quiet. Then refugees began arriving
by the hundreds of thousands, pouring
from trains packed to triple their
capacity, in which passengers had
stood for 18 hours.
Some stepped off wearing little more
than the pajamas they had on when
the bombs fell.
“They are very sad, scared people,”
Tymo said.
Catholic organizations such as
his own university, Caritas, and the
Knights of Malta render aid and
assistance. Most refugees are women
and children. Men aged 18 to 60 must
remain to defend Ukraine.
Tymo is grateful for American support,
both spiritual and military. He
asks everyone to keep reminding their
elected officials in Washington, D.C.,
of the need to support Ukraine.
“You will have to pay a price, probably
at the fueling stations,” he said.
“We understand that the world doesn’t
owe us anything. You don’t have to do
this, strictly speaking. On the other
hand, we are not just protecting our
own country. It is clear that [Russian
President Vladimir] Putin will not
stop with Ukraine. He is determined
to destroy the whole security system,
the world order that is not perfect —
but is as good as we have ever had.”
Some Ukrainian-Americans are
taking great risks to help. Shortly
after the invasion, Father Jason
Charron, pastor of Holy Trinity
Ukrainian Catholic Church in Carnegie,
went to Ukraine with one of
his parishioners to rescue a 9-year-old
girl that the parishioner intended to
adopt. They emerged with a busload
of 22 orphans and just as many other
refugees, whom they took into Poland,
across Slovakia and the Czech Republic,
to Lithuania.
The parishioner, Pittsburgh businessman
Allen Sherwood, had promised
Orphans rescued by
Father Jason Charron
and Allen Sherwood during
meal time at a refugee
center in Lviv, Ukraine.
| FATHER JASON CHARRON
the child when
she visited last
Christmas that,
if anything
bad were ever
to happen, he
would rescue
her.
When the
tanks rolled
across the border, “he flew into action,”
Father Charron said.
Sherwood had never been to
Ukraine and spoke no Ukrainian.
Father Charron had taught English
in Lviv, where he had met his wife,
Halyna — Eastern Catholic Churches
ordain married men. The Charrons
have seven children, ages 2 to 21.
The orphanage director in Kyiv told
March 25, 2022 • ANGELUS • 11