The missionary and social activist traveled last week, along with several organizations in the Region, to the border with Ukraine
One of the things that struck Joaquín Sánchez the most when he arrived at the Isaccea refugee camp, in Romania, were “the looks” of the people fleeing Ukraine, from their own homes. «Looks full of sadness, uncertainty, anguish and fear. Lost looks because they don’t know if their house will still be standing when they return to their country, or if the relatives who have stayed there will still be alive”, defines Sánchez, a missionary priest and social activist who has spent decades dealing with misery and solidarity to equal parts, attending to situations of extreme vulnerability that, he acknowledges, “have nothing to do with what a war produces, with the broken lives that these damn conflicts leave, with panic, horror and human pain at its maximum expression” .
In fact, Sánchez and all the members of the organizations that have joined the Caravan for Peace to take more than 78 tons of clothing, food and medicine to the border with Ukraine return to Spain “torn”. The emotional wear and tear after touring the refugee camps in Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Poland is “enormous”, he points out, and there is no “possible consolation” to alleviate “all that suffering”.
The priest himself, who joined this solidarity caravan to contribute his priceless “human warmth”, to give “smiles and empathy” in a time of tears, acknowledges that he had to leave many times to “shed tears in front of the sea” and , after downloading, «return to task».
a common denominator
“Almost all the people we saw were women who carried their entire lives in a small suitcase or bag. In one hand they carried the suitcase, and in the other they carried the children », she recalls.
Sánchez was also struck by the different means of transportation in which many refugees crossed the border: barges, buses, beat-up cars and even high-end vehicles. Even walking. All these people, clarifies the priest “had a common denominator: they are lives broken by war.”
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