Two staff members and five others taking shelter at a Caritas office in Mariupol, Ukraine, were killed after the building was destroyed by tank fire.

A quiet monastery in the western Ukrainian village of Hoshiv has transformed itself into a giant playground for a dozen children who’ve been displaced by the war with their families.

On Palm Sunday, Pope Francis made an appeal to “lay down the arms in Ukraine” and asked, “What kind of a victory would it be to plant a flag on a heap of ruins?”

Faced with anxieties we have not experienced since the Cold War, perhaps it is time to return to Thomas Merton’s writings on nuclear weapons and the Christian responsibility to advocate for peace in a nuclear age.

The world is witnessing “ever-more horrendous acts of cruelty done against civilians, unarmed women and children, whose innocent blood cries out to heaven and implores, ‘End this war.’”

By tempering his rhetoric on Ukraine, the pope is protecting his role as a peacemaker. He is also downplaying any conflict between Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches.