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

plow and then looks back, is fit for the
kingdom of God,” he read.
The family took it not as a direct
command, but as a sign that God was
close to them, and that he wanted
them to decide freely.
A few hours after the missionaries
went back to their homes that night,
the invasion began. To their surprise,
the violence soon reached Kyiv. Gun
battles with suspected Russian infiltrators
broke out in the streets. Explosions
and air-raid sirens followed.
Today, Emmanuele and Maria feel
secure in their decision to remain in
the country where they’ve lived since
2016.
“Since we took that decision to stay
in Ukraine, God has given us so many
signs, so many graces,” recalled Emmanuele
in a phone interview.
A few years after getting married and
settling in Emmanuele’s hometown of
Brescia in northern Italy, the couple
were officially sent by Pope Francis as
a missionary family of the Neocatechumenal
Way to Kyiv, together with
several other young families, at the
request of Kyiv’s Catholic bishop.
For the last six years, their mission
has been a simple one: to be a visible
presence of God’s love in the capital
city together with their small
children, living and working among
ordinary people. The families meet
a few times a week for Mass and a
liturgy of the word, as well as for street
evangelization. Some families help
give catechesis in parishes, others
with marriage preparation for young
couples.
For Catholic missionaries in Ukraine
like the Caprettis, a different mission
now begins.
Two days after the invasion started,
Kyiv was under attack and
Emmanuele needed to get food
for his family. Some friends who had
fled the city had left him their house
keys, and their permission to take
whatever he needed. He was amazed
by what they had left him.
“We had never, ever had that much
food in our home until that day,” he
said with a chuckle. He later heard
in the news that players from toptier
Ukrainian soccer team Shakhtar
Donetsk had lacked food while taking
shelter with their families in a Kyiv
hotel.
“Hearing that made me see the love
of God,” said Emmanuele. “He gave
us to eat when we had nothing, while
so many people in this country are
going hungry.”
That didn’t make the situation in
Kyiv less frightening. The threat of
Russian airstrikes turned the city into
what Maria described as a “ghost
town” shrouded in total darkness at
night. The family covered their windows
with mattresses to protect against
possible blasts. The evening of the first
bombings, Maria sang the Litany of
the Saints to her children to drown
out the noise. While the explosions
kept Emmanuele and Maria awake
every night, they experienced nothing
short of a parenting miracle: The kids
slept through them without fail.
“To see the children always happy
and serene in this unbelievable
situation was a grace from God,” said
Maria. “We’ve seen how God has
always given us a great peace, despite
the fear.”
A few nights later, as the attacks on
Kyiv intensified, a terrified Emmanuele
made his way to a church for a
weekly catechesis session. No one else
showed up, but he found out another
missionary family who had just fled
Kyiv had left their car there for his
family to use.
“It was totally crazy to go out that
night, to leave my wife and children
alone at home, absolutely crazy,”
admitted Emmanuele.
Yet the risk paid off. The car helped
get the Caprettis to the city’s train
station, where a chaos that reminded
Emmanuele of a scene from the film
“Life is Beautiful” awaited them.
“It was total panic,” he recalled. The
day was Friday, March 4. A sea of people
waiting for the next train rushed
the train’s doors, with soldiers armed
with machine guns standing in the
way. To make it onboard, the family
had to abandon their suitcases full of
clothes at the station.
“It was like the Lord opened the Red
Sea for us that day,” said Emmanuele.
The family spent the next 12 hours
cramped inside the train headed west
to Uzhhorod, a city on the border
with Slovakia, as far as possible from
the violence without leaving Ukraine.
The train moved through the
Ukrainian countryside in darkness.
Cellphones had to be turned off to
avoid detection by enemy forces. The
family had nothing to eat or drink, or
anywhere to sit or move around. To
relieve themselves, passengers were
shown a hole between two train cars
where they could do so.
A photo of an empty food display at a supermarket
near Kyiv taken by Emmanuele Capretti March 2.
The children slept on the floor and,
to their parent’s amazement, didn’t
complain once. (“They were angels,”
said Maria, as their ruckus could be
heard in the background of the phone
interview a week later.) A man gave
up his seat so that Maria, six months
pregnant, could sit down. And a woman
on the train offered to hold their
March 25, 2022 • ANGELUS • 15