In high, tremulous voices, the Sisters of the Holy Family were chanting their midday prayers when a child’s gleeful shout echoed from a nearby corridor, punctuating the solemn incantation. The Ukrainian nuns didn’t miss a beat.
At this quiet monastery in the green foothills of the Carpathian mountains, the timeless rhythms of spiritual life have been altered in ways large and small by the presence of dozens of war-displaced mothers and children, many of whom arrive terrified and traumatised by bombardment and fighting.