U.S. scholar briefs Cardinal Zuppi on state of Ukraine's stolen children

By Justin McLellan

ROME (CNS) -- Faith communities, including the Catholic Church, "will be the catalyst that decides whether (Ukrainian children) are returned" home after they were illegally taken into Russia during the war, said a U.S. scholar tracking the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children into Russia.

"When faith communities act together, governments listen. Both governments that have done things wrong and governments that can help do things right," Nathaniel Raymond, executive director of the Yale Humanitarian Lab, told Catholic News Service after a roundtable discussion with reporters in Rome Sept. 26.

The Yale Humanitarian Lab's landmark February 2023 report exposed the scale of Russia's systemic deportation of Ukrainian children, principally by using satellite data, and it conservatively estimated that 6,000 children had been taken to camps to undergo involuntary "russification" in the first year since Russia's full-scale invasion. It expects to publish an updated report in September. Current figures published by the Ukrainian government estimate just under 20,000 children have been illegally taken into Russia.

While in Rome, Raymond said he had "long and productive" meetings with Vatican officials and with Cardinal Matteo Zuppi of Bologna, Pope Francis' envoy for peace in Ukraine.

The cardinal had discussed the repatriation of Ukrainian children with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv, U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington and government officials in Moscow including Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Russia's presidential commissioner for children's rights, who has an arrest warrant issued against her by the International Criminal Court for her alleged involvement in unlawfully transferring Ukrainian children into Russia. Cardinal Zuppi also traveled to Beijing Sept. 13-15 to meet with a senior Chinese official, but the subject of Ukrainian children was not mentioned in the Vatican's statement released after the meeting.

Raymond said he stressed to Vatican officials the importance of obtaining accurate information on the identities, location and number of Ukrainian children taken by Russia.

"Right now our biggest need is for those children to be registered by Russia as is required by international law," he said. "If we don't have that, we can't do any of those four things" that are essential: first, return the children to Ukraine; but also identify them, hold perpetrators accountable and support families whose children have been taken.

"Call the Russians and ask for registration," he said was his message to the Vatican.

The human rights investigator cited the Catholic Church's role in finding children who had been separated from their families during the Latin American "dirty wars" in the 1980's to underscore the value of the Catholic network in repatriating Ukrainian children. Returning children taken from their family "requires documents, it requires DNA, it requires a lot of time to do for one kid," he said. "Now, multiply it by thousands for a country that's in the middle of war."

Raymond explained that the situation of Ukraine's stolen children is in its "golden hour," referring to the time in which a patient can still be saved immediately following a traumatic accident. "The sooner we return the children, the easier it's going to be," he said. "But if we don't, this is going to take decades."

"If faith communities are not active, then there is little chance of success," he added.

In May, President Zelenskyy met with Pope Francis at the Vatican and said he raised the issue of Ukraine's deported children with the pope.