Pope Francis on Wednesday encouraged people to spend less on gifts and parties this Christmas and send the difference to Ukrainians in need.
At the end of his weekly general audience, Francis called attention to Ukraine, something he has done repeatedly since Russian launched an invasion into the country earlier this year.
“Let’s have a more humble Christmas, with more humble gifts,” Francis said. “They are hungry, they are cold, many die due to lack of doctors or nurses.”
“Let us not forget them, Christmas in peace with the Lord, yes, but with the Ukrainians in our hearts. Let us make a concrete gesture to them,” he added.
Pope Francis has called for an end to the war in Ukraine and prayed for the “martyred” Ukrainian people. In recent months, the Vatican has sent humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
In August, the Vatican named Russia as the aggressor in the war in Ukraine for the first time, calling Moscow’s full-scale invasion “morally unjust, unacceptable, barbaric, senseless, repugnant and sacrilegious.”
More recently, Pope Francis compared the suffering in Ukraine sparked by the war to the former leader of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin’s 1930s-era genocide — the Holodomor.
The Holodomor refers to Stalin’s human-made famine in Ukraine, which is believed to have killed between 3 and 7 million people.