"May this be the last wartime Christmas," he said in his homily.
Hours after he left the city, Russia fiercely attacked Ukraine's energy system and some cities with cruise and ballistic missiles in what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called an "inhuman" Christmas Day assault, which wounded six people in Kharkiv.
"It was a 6 a.m. attack on Christmas Day," Cardinal Krajewski told OSV News in a message recorded when he was traveling in a train "completely dark" for security reasons, which took him from Kharkiv to Lviv in western Ukraine in a 14-hour trip Dec. 25.
"This is Christmas in Ukraine. People were at home when the attack happened," the cardinal said. On Dec. 23, when he was getting ready for the trip to eastern Ukraine, he told Pope Francis he was afraid precisely of the drone attacks possible "really at any moment." The pope assured him of his support and prayer for the mission and told the papal point man for charity to "keep going."
After the attack on Kharkiv, many people were left without heating in temperatures roughly 34 degrees Fahrenheit.
"The power generators we provided from the Vatican, which were a gift from the Holy Father, are saving lives," the cardinal told OSV News. The Vatican has recently provided two trucks full of power generators to eastern Ukraine.
Cardinal Krajewski, prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Charity, celebrated Mass in the Kharkiv cathedral with Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, the apostolic nuncio to Ukraine, Bishop Pavlo Honcharuk of Kharkiv-Zaporizhzhia, Greek Catholic bishops, and Ukrainian Orthodox bishops of Kharkiv.
"I saw a church really united there," the cardinal said after his ecumenical celebration. "All of us celebrated Christmas together -- it's time to discard historical disputes, embrace different traditions that we have and together stop this senseless war."
"Because Jesus repeatedly asked that we are one," he told OSV News.
Local bishops and the mayor of Kharkiv thanked Pope Francis for his support, including 250 trucks filled with donations that have traveled from Rome's Basilica of Santa Sofia to Ukraine since the start of the war.
"May the next Christmas be full of joy and freedom for Ukraine," Cardinal Krajewski prayed before sharing a Christmas Vigil meal with local clergy and religious, of whom all were invited to be greeted by the papal envoy.
Cardinal Krajewski began his ninth trip to Ukraine Dec. 18, driving a mobile hospital, which he donated to Caritas Ukraine in Lviv Dec. 21. After leaving a large medical camper, adapted to specific needs of a country where hospitals are often damaged or inaccessible, and six ultrasound machines in Lviv, he headed to Kyiv by train Dec. 22.
On Dec. 23, he opened a soup kitchen for the needy in Fastiv, west of Kyiv. On Dec. 24, in Kyiv, he visited the five Missionaries of Charity—sisters of the congregation Mother Teresa founded—and those they care for.
Later, the papal envoy to Ukraine visited the community of St. Nicholas Catholic Parish, which was shattered by a recent Russian drone and missile attack that was intercepted by Ukrainian forces. Falling debris damaged the stained-glass windows, including a historic rosette, on Dec. 20.
"The community passed (on) a gift for the Holy Father -- a dove, a symbol of peace, painted on a piece of broken glass from the stained-glass window," the cardinal told OSV News. "Pope Francis wanted me to tell them he is with them, he prays for Ukraine and he wants me to embrace everyone on his behalf."
Back at the Vatican, Pope Francis, in his "urbi at orbi" message to the city of Rome and the world on Christmas Day, prayed that the Jubilee Year, which opened on Dec. 24, may become "a season of hope," urging "the sound of arms be silenced" in Ukraine and other places shattered by war.