In Ukraine, Sister Justine stays with babies at pediatric hospice

"She’s there tonight, during the war, filling with love the last days of tiny babies like the one she’s holding tonight."

While the horror of the war in Ukraine shakes the world, Dr. Matilde Leonardi—director of the Besta Hospital in Milan, neurologist, specialist in neonatology, pediatrics and bioethics—recently shared on social networks her great emotion while telling the beautiful story of Sr. Justine, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Life alongside Dr. Leonardi.

“She’s there tonight, during the war, filling with love the last days of tiny babies like the one she’s holding tonight. You can only pray and do your duty, she tells me. Yes to Life. Sister Justine is one of my heroes in my life.”

Sr. Justina Holubert is a geneticist and psychologist at Lviv Medical Genetic Center, Institute of Hereditary Pathology, National Academy of Medical Science of #Ukraine, President of Imprint of Life perinatal hospice, and my friend and colleague at the Pontifical Academy of Life. She sent me this photo this evening, from Lviv where she lives and works with infants who are terminally ill due to very serious illnesses. In fact, she founded the first and only Hospice for palliative and terminal care for these infants in Ukraine.

For those who want, I’m posting photos of a detailed article in which she explains what she does as a geneticist and also director of the hospice. She’s there tonight, during the war, filling with love the last days of tiny babies like the one she’s holding tonight. You can only pray and do your duty, she tells me. Yes to Life. Sister Justine is one of my heroes in my life. ❤️

Sr. Justine works in the city of Lviv, in the west of the country. A geneticist, she deals with hereditary genetic diseases, in the position of medical psychologist at the Medical Genetics Center in Lviv. She’s also the president of a perinatal hospice, the NGO Perinatal Hospice Imprint of Life, which she founded in 2013 and which obtained legal status as a state-run non-profit organization in 2017.

At this hospice, she takes in these children destined for certain death because they have serious genetic diseases. She cares for them and accompanies them and their parents to the final threshold. It’s admirable, meritorious, and even courageous work. This hospice is a first for perinatal palliative care in Ukraine. Ukraine is not only the self-service store of surrogates! That vast and wounded land is also a field where if anyone puts seeds, they germinate.

The doctor’s beautiful message highlights this heroine, devoted and upright, faithful to her post and to those who suffer, in daily life as in times of war. The embodiment of the beauty of humanity is in this image, and we can only be moved.