Does God Abandon His Children? Does God Abandon His Children When They Are Good?
It still tops the list of the most unforgettable moments of the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
In the Roman suburb of Corviale and after celebrating Mass, Pope Francis met with and answered questions from the neighborhood’s children.
Emmanuele had a question but, as he approached the microphone, he froze. Despite the encouragement of a papal aide, he repeated “I can’t.”
As the aide helped the boy to the platform where the pope was seated, Emanuele sobbed.
“Come, come to me, Emanuele. Come and whisper it in my ear,” the pope encouraged before enveloping him in a huge, papal embrace, patting his head and speaking softly.
EDITORS’ GIFT: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=996580749289878
Heads touching, the boy and the pope whispered to each other before Emanuele returned to his seat.
Then, in words so-Francis, the Bishop of Rome declared, “If only we could all cry like Emanuele when we have an ache in our hearts like he has. He was crying for his father and had the courage to do it in front of us because in his heart there is love for his father.”
With Emanuele’s permission, Pope Francis explained the boy told him “‘A little while ago my father passed away. He was a nonbeliever, but he had all four of his children baptized. He was a good man. Is dad in heaven?’
“How beautiful to hear a son say of his father, ‘He was good,’ And what a beautiful witness of a son who inherited the strength of his father, who had the courage to cry in front of all of us. If that man was able to make his children like that, then it’s true, he was a good man. He was a good man.
“That man did not have the gift of faith, he wasn’t a believer, but he had his children baptized. He had a good heart,” Pope Francis said. “God is the one who says who goes to heaven.
The next step in answering Emanuele’s question, Francis said, would be to think about what God is like and, especially, what kind of heart God has. “What do you think? A father’s heart. God has a dad’s heart. And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptized his children and gave them that bravura, do you think God would be able to leave him far from himself?”
“Does God abandon his children?” the pope asked. “Does God abandon his children when they are good?”
The children shouted, “No.”
“There, Emanuele, that is the answer,” the pope told the boy. “God surely was proud of your father, because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than to baptize them when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much.”
Don’t ask why we remembered this most absolutely-Francis moment but we did, as we read “Ukraine’s Stolen Children: Inside Russia’s Network of Re-education and Militarization” from Yale University’s School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab (September 16, 2025).
On June 25, The Guardian (“’Basically impossible to get them back’ Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children is a war crime, says experts,” Ruchi Kumar.) reported:
“As many as 35,000 Ukrainian children are still missing and thought to be held in Russia or Russian-occupied territories, according to an American team of experts, with families saying they are being forced to take desperate and risky measures to try to rescue them.”
On June 9, the Web site United24 Media, which describes itself as “committed to providing our audience with honest, accurate, and fair coverage of Ukraine,” reported:
“Nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have been forcibly transferred to Russia or Russian-occupied territories since Russia started its full-scale invasion. There, they are subjected to brutal ‘re-education’ aimed at erasing their language, culture, and roots….”
It is impossible to determine the number of Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russia or Russian-occupied territories since Russia started its full-scale invasion. Nonetheless, the Yale document confirms that they are subjected to brutal “re-education” aimed at erasing their language, culture, and roots.
The 28-page report with 68 “endnotes,” a list of 210 “reeducation” and military training facilities, “sanitariums” and other places to which thousands of Ukrainian children and teens have been sent inside Russia and as far away as Mongolia, is exceptionally well documented.
It makes one point especially clear: Vladimir Putin is the living embodiment of evil and any American president who believes otherwise and thinks he can negotiate or make a “deal” with him is dumber-than-tumbleweed.
Nasty?
We’ll try to outline – using direct quotes - some high points from the Yale report.
You decide.
“The Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) has concluded that children from Ukraine have been taken to at least 210 facilities inside Russia and temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation in 2022… Children have been held at these locations for varying periods of time: some children have gone to these locations temporarily and returned home. Other groups of children have been held indefinitely. In some cases, children who have entered this network of camps, so-called family centers, and other facilities have entered Russia’s program of coerced fostering and adoption, eventually being placed with families in Russia and becoming naturalized citizens of the Russian Federation…
“Children at these facilities routinely undergo “reeducation” and, in many cases, are placed in programs of forced militarization that include, though are not limited to, combat and paratrooper training. Children at some facilities have been engaged in the production of military equipment for Russia’s armed forces, including drones…
“HRL can conclude that Russia is operating a potentially unprecedented system of large-scale re-education, military training, and dormitory facilities capable of holding tens of thousands of children from Ukraine for long periods of time…
“Children from Ukraine have been taken to at least 210 locations in Russia and temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine.
“HRL has categorized the different locations to which children from Ukraine have been taken since 2022. The eight location types are: cadet schools, a military base, medical facilities, a religious site, secondary schools and universities, a hotel, family support centers and orphanages, and most frequently, camps and sanatoriums. Re-education activities have occurred at the majority of locations identified. Re-education activities involving children from Ukraine have occurred in at least 130 sites (61.9%) identified in this study. The activities constituting re-education include cultural, patriotic, or military programming that aligns with pro-Russia narratives… Although it cannot be confirmed at this time, it is likely that children from Ukraine have undergone re-education activities at a higher percentage of the facilities identified as part of this report...
“Russia has been engaged in the deportation, reeducation, militarization, and coerced fostering and adoption of children from Ukraine since at least 2014 in the temporarily occupied territories of Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk. Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, these efforts significantly expanded in scale and scope. Cohorts of children were rapidly included in the Russian Federation’s pre-existing program of Russification from newly occupied regions such as Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and cities such as Kharkiv and Mariupol.
“An unknown number of children were placed on Russia’s adoption websites, presented as Russian orphans and placed with Russian families for fostering and adoption.…
“[T]he volume and timing of these facility expansions [opened since 2021 and documented in the Yale report] coincide with Russia’s implementation of systematic transfer, re-education, and militarization of Ukraine’s children…
“HRL defines re-education as the promotion of cultural, historical, societal, and patriotic messages or ideas that align with and serve the interests of the federal government of Russia… the number of facilities at which Ukraine’s children underwent re-education activities is likely significantly higher than what HRL was able to document… children underwent lectures on history and geopolitics, visited museums and historical sites, sang Russia’s national anthem and participated in programming centered on Russian patriotic themes… activities were conducted exclusively in the Russian language. These activities fit within a broader campaign under Putin’s orders to Russify the residents of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine...
“Children from Ukraine underwent militarization in at least 39 of 210 (18.6%) of the facilities identified. These facilities are located in Russia and temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine… HRL defines militarization as the psychological and physical conditioning of children to the technology, practices, and culture of the Russian military. This includes the simulation of military scenarios. The militarization of children from Ukraine was observed at nearly equal proportion of facilities identified in Russia and in temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine. Children undergoing organized militarization programs at camps, sanatoriums, cadet schools and at the military base are stated to fall within the age range of eight to 17 years old…
“…children were required to participate in a range of activities, including being taught “development of ‘fire and naval training skills.’” They participated in “shooting competitions, grenade throwing competitions,” and received “tactical medicine, drone control and tactics training…
“”HRL documented children from Donetsk oblast receiving “airborne training” at a military base. In this instance, the children were brought to the base on an aircraft managed by the Presidential Property Management Department within the Russian Presidential Administration. HRL has previously documented the use of an aircraft with the same tail number to transport Ukraine’s children as part of Russia’s program of coerced adoption and fostering…
In January 2025, the Center for Countering Disinformation, a Ukrainian state body, reported that children from territories occupied by Russia since 2014 have been enlisted by Russia’s military and were killed in combat in 2022.11 In the past decade at least, a general increase in military and patriotic programming targeted towards children in Russia has been occurring.
“As the Russian state attempts to create a more martial youth culture, children in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine are included in the state’s efforts, with some entering a pipeline to enlistment in Russia’s military. For at least a decade, Putin has ordered the expansion of patriotic education and militarization of Russia’s youth.
“Russia’s government fully operates nearly all cadet schools, medical facilities, orphanages and family centers, secondary schools and universities and the military base identified in this report.
“HRL has also documented on two occasions the use of an aircraft owned by the Presidential Property Management Department to transport children from Ukraine. In July 2023, this aircraft, first identified by HRL in its December 2024 report transported children from Ukraine to a military base in Pskov oblast where they underwent paratrooper training…
“The Presidential Grants Foundation is a federal body which issues grants to nongovernmental organizations on behalf of the President of the Russian Federation. One of these involved a program specifically focused on psychological support for children of military service personnel, while the other was taking children from Ukraine to Mongolia. On this trip, the participating camp did not conceal the fact that the children were from Donetsk oblast and emphasized instead that the “Children from the DPR are also Russian!”
“Russia’s youth-targeted militarization and re-education programs are supported and implemented by several organizations affiliated with the state. HRL identified four of these organizations, which President Putin and the federal government helped establish and fund. Three of these programs, the All-Russian military patriotic movement “Yunarmiya,” the Center for military and patriotic education of youth “Avangard” and the “Warrior” center, implemented the military training undergone by children from Ukraine at nine of the 39 facilities (23%) at which HRL observed the phenomena.28 Of the total 130 locations where HRL observed that children from Ukraine underwent reeducation, at least ten (7.6%) were organized by the organization, “Movement of the First.”
The conclusions of the Yale-based Humanitarian Research Lab are straightforward:
“This report expands on HRL’s previous findings to demonstrate the extent of direction and complicity of the Russian government in this program, with over half of the locations identified directly managed by Russian federal or local government bodies… Russian government involvement appears in the funding mechanisms, transportation modalities, military training curricula and recruitment pipeline — all of which fuel the constellation of elements that comprise a program that aims to fold Ukraine‘s children into the Russian war machine, whether it be through its civilian arm or military wing… The Fourth Geneva Convention acknowledges the vulnerabilities inherent to children affected by war, and mandates that orphaned or separated children must receive special protection and support and may be evacuated only on a temporary basis for their safety, with safeguards in place to preserve their identity and nationality. If, due to the nature of the conflict, children are unable to be returned to their country of origin, they must be instead hosted by a neutral country….”
Pope Francis asked and answered his question to the children gathered in front of him: “What do you think? A father’s heart. God has a dad’s heart…”
Putin doesn’t have “a dad’s heart.”
He’s a cold-blooded KGB killer with egomaniacal dreams of reconstituting a Russian empire.
Hopefully, the man in the White House, who promised to end – “on day one” - the Russian war against Ukraine and its people way back in January and keeps giving Putin “two weeks” (and now “two months”), will recognize what Yale and the world are telling him and find the courage - and personal integrity - to stand up to the Russian kidnapper and murderer.