Aid to the Church in Need–USA and the Faith & Reason Institute have launched a new podcast series, Faith Under Siege, spotlighting Christians who face persecution and violence for their faith across the globe.
The inaugural episode features Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, in conversation with author Robert Royal.
The series arrives as Ukraine approaches the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, a conflict that continues to exact a heavy human and spiritual toll. Speaking from Kyiv, Shevchuk described how the country’s Christians have responded with what he called an “existential ecumenism” — a unity born not of theory, but of necessity.
“Christians are united in our response to save human lives — cooperating, helping each other,” Shevchuk said. “We would not ever ask who you are — Are you Orthodox? Are you Protestant? Are you Catholic? — in order to provide adequate humanitarian aid.”
That cooperation, he added, has led to a shared moral voice on behalf of the war’s victims, even amid deep historical and theological differences. The experience, he suggested, offers a lived model of Christian unity shaped by suffering rather than debate.
The podcast is hosted by Royal, president of the Faith & Reason Institute and a longtime analyst of religious persecution. He also serves as a special consultant to Aid to the Church in Need-USA, which supports the series as part of a year-long collaboration aimed at raising awareness of Christians under threat worldwide.
Royal is widely known for his work on modern martyrdom, including The Martyrs of the New Millennium, commissioned by ACN and published last year. The book revisited the phenomenon of Christian martyrdom 25 years after his earlier study, The Catholic Martyrs of the Twentieth Century, and underscored how violence against believers has not diminished in the contemporary world.
In the opening episode, His Beatitude Shevchuk focused on immediate humanitarian needs but also on the long-term wounds of war — particularly psychological and spiritual trauma. “Ukraine is wounded, but Ukraine is resilient,” he said. “But we have to take care of those people.”
He warned that the scale of trauma will demand decades of pastoral attention, calling mental health and spiritual accompaniment a central mission for the Church in the years ahead. Programs addressing psychological injury, physical disability, and moral exhaustion, he said, are no longer optional but essential.
Faith Under Siege will continue with episodes highlighting persecuted Christian communities in other regions, offering firsthand testimony alongside analysis of global religious freedom trends.
