Sister Lucía Caram's trips to Ukraine, where she enjoys the respect of even Zelensky

Special Envoy to UkraineSister Pilar blesses the food with a mechanical prayer, the way someone does it daily and several times a day. On the table, tortilla, ham, soup, cream of zucchini, and gazpacho. "Lucia didn't make that, eh! Gazpacho doesn't suit her…" Sister Juana Mari spills the beans. Thus, with a communal dinner at the convent of Santa Clara in Manresa, Sister Lucía Caram's 36th humanitarian expedition to Ukraine begins. This time she transports two ambulances and a pick-up, which set off the next day at 5:30 a.m.

A trip to Ukraine by car offers a lot. In any conversation with Sister Lucía Caram, the names of ministers, the country's most important businessmen, famous television presenters, and Pope Francis repeatedly come up. Her extensive list of contacts is one of the keys to these humanitarian expeditions she has been organizing for over three years through the Santa Clara Convent Foundation, which she directs.

"This is ambulance number 154 we delivered to Ukraine," she explains, sitting inside one of the two vehicles donated by the Girona Provincial Council. Once they cross the border, they will head directly to Kharkiv, one of the cities hardest hit by Russian bombs. Twelve TMB buses, donated to Caram's foundation by Barcelona City Council, have also been operating in this northeastern Ukrainian city for the past few weeks.

Inside the ambulances are power generators, medical supplies, candy, Barça shirts and stuffed animals, and the last remaining rosaries of Pope Francis. This time, there are also boxes full of clothing for the Ukrainian soldiers who have been released in recent weeks in the POW exchange between Russia and Ukraine. Just days before they left, their contacts in Ukraine told them about this new need: after years of captivity, the soldiers have nothing. They've also lost a lot of weight. And one of the basic things they need is clothing. Caram pulled strings and arranged for a company to send him a thousand T-shirts and hundreds of tracksuits, all brand new.

A large part of the funding for the Santa Clara Convent Foundation comes from CaixaBank's Social Action and Volunteer Association. But donations, both from companies and individuals, also play a very important role. "Social media helps me a lot. I pray by heaven, by land, by sea, by all means, I pray to God. I spend my time applying for grants, talking to companies, going to various places explaining what we're doing." She argues that these constant trips—they've been there four times in the last two months—allow for transparency with donors.

Refugees, soldiers, and the sick

Sister Lucía Caram, who arrived in Manresa from Argentina 36 years ago, is a contemplative Dominican nun, but her community is not cloistered, as their pace of life demonstrates. The six nuns share their life with lay people. "In the convent, where the nuns are accustomed to having everything very tidy, the cloisters are transformed into spaces for sorting clothes, for the entry and exit of volunteers, and for people being taken in. We have kept some of the wounded or cancer patients in the convent for months or even years. The convent has become a field hospital, as Pope Francis liked to say," summarizes Caram, who had a very close relationship with the former pontiff.

The first expedition to help the Ukrainians took place a few days after Vladimir Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Caram arrived as far as on the border between Poland and Ukraine, with the intention of taking relatives of Ukrainians whom the Foundation had welcomed since the war in Donbas began in 2014. "On March 6, 2022, I returned to Manresa with six people: a mother with two children, another mother with one child, and a woman who came alone," he recalls.

From the fourth trip on, Caram entered Ukraine. There he visited a military hospital for the first time: "I met many young men with their heads open, without arms, without legs, with lost looks. They said that on the battlefield they saw their comrades dying, that if someone was wounded they knew they would die because they had open wounds and they begged us to find ambulances so they could help them. They asked us if we could bring some wounded to Spain." Since then, they have brought about 100 wounded to be treated in Catalan hospitals. They have also transferred about 60 cancer patients. "This is one of the few trips where we won't be bringing wounded with us. I've had a pile-up here, but on the next trip we'll probably have six back, and another six will come."

In total, especially in the first months of the war, the foundation helped bring some 4,000 people to Spain, primarily women with children. CaixaBank provided 17 apartments, where refugee families and wounded soldiers are housed while they recover. The organization cooperates with CatSalut, the Mutua de Terrassa, the Parc Taulí in Sabadell, and the Hospital Clínic. Patients have also been sent to Vall d'Hebron and Sant Joan de Déu. The Althaia Foundation in Manresa has also treated cases, primarily of oncology. It has also facilitated the transfer of teams of doctors and psychologists from Odessa to Barcelona for training at the Guttmann Institute.

In parallel, the foundation maintains cooperation with the Ukrainian Border Guard, to whom it provides ambulances. pick-ups and medicines, and with which it also manages the transport of the wounded and sick. Volunteers from associations such as the TMB Solidarity Drivers Association, private individuals, and even the chauffeurs of CaixaBank executives have contributed to the transport of all these vehicles over the past three years.

Over these three years of travel, Caram has earned the trust of high-ranking figures. Andri Kukharenko, a robust general, embraces him upon his arrival, with a restrained but affectionate smile. It's hard to see him laugh during his four-day stay in Ukraine, but he doesn't hide his gratitude for the nun's involvement. He has a deep voice that resonates in his ribcage. His shadow these days is Oleksi, who acts as a translator. Cautious, discreet, he seems self-conscious amidst that group of soldiers. Six months ago, he worked in the communications department of an IT company. Now he wears a military uniform and admits that at any moment he could be sent to the trenches. It's the reality of the men of a country at war.

"What do you need?" is the question Caram repeatedly asks. Her pragmatism has led her to become an intermediary in the relationship between senior Ukrainian military officials and the Spanish government. This is evident in the video call she manages between the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the Secretary General of Defense Policy, Admiral Juan Francisco Martínez Núñez, with the head of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, Lieutenant General Serhí Deinek, who arrives late because he has come directly from a meeting. Perhaps there was already intelligence information about the brutal Russian attack that Kiev would suffer and other areas of the country in the following hours.

Ukraine has recognized Caram's humanitarian work with the award of the Order of Princess Olga. Ukraine's ambassador to Spain, Serhi Pohoreltsev, announced at the end of February that Volodymyr Zelensky had signed the decree granting her this distinction, which is awarded to women for their scientific, educational, cultural, or social merits. In fact, a meeting with the Ukrainian president was even planned for this last trip to personally present him with the decoration. However, Zelensky's schedule is secret and unpredictable, and wartime obligations force plans to change.

"The nuns at the convent say I have an addiction in Ukraine," she says, adding, "As long as I have the strength and the resources, we will continue going. I have the strength; I lack the resources, but we will continue praying to God for everything as I do every day."