On January 11, 2023, the Domberg Academy, located outside Munich, Germany, hosted a webinar on the topic of “Loving Your Enemies: How to Love Your Enemies in Times of the War?” Among the speakers, in addition to Sergii Bortnyk, there were also the German Catholic military bishop Dr. Franz-Josef Overbeck and the Jesuit priest from Ukraine Mykhailo Stanchyshyn.
In his presentation, Sergii Bortnyk reviewed a number of quotations from the Holy Scriptures, quoted from Mykola Patrushev, one of the Russian ideologues of the current war, from Timothy Snyder, a historian from the USA, from Filaret Drozdov, Metropolitan of Moscow in the 19th century, and cited recent sociological data on the preferences of Ukrainians. Final thought of Sergii Bortnyk was the thesis reflected in the Ukrainian national anthem that “our enemies will perish like dew in the sun”. Here the fate of the enemy is placed in the hands of God, and Ukrainians seek only freedom from these enemies.
You can read the edited text of the presentation in German here – https://www.academic-initiative.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Feindesliebe_SB.pdf.
A video recording of the entire webinar can be viewed here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7TgiCHHkTI (presentation of Sergii Bortnyk – 16:35 – 32:00).