Supporting a country at war.
The fundraising dinner for the Ukrainian Catholic University at Church House, Westminster, on the feast of St Michael, patron of Kyiv, was – inevitably – both cheerful and sombre. Cheerful because it was a celebration of the remarkable achievements of a small Catholic university that has attracted the country’s top graduates five years in a row; sombre because the backdrop to this evening of good fellowship was a bloody war. In one clip, we saw a young doctoral student in fatigues; in another, a succession of young Ukrainians in exile in various parts of the world. A celebrated folk singer, Yuri Josyfovych, sang of the country and the steppes and his final song was something of a hymn.
