A Russian student, 21-year-old Alisa Iordan, went from planning suicide last November to starting a journey into the Catholic faith as her country went to war, until she was baptised last Saturday by Archbishop Charles Scicluna.

“I feel at peace but very excited at the same time,” she said after her baptism.

Alisa is a second-year sociology student at the University of Malta, having moved here from Russia with her mother and sister 10 years ago.

Her mother wanted to give her daughters a European education and Malta seemed to be her natural choice because of the lovely climate and kind people, Alisa said.

Alisa Iordan, 21.

Alisa started to believe in God last January, just as the leader of her birth country was planning to invade Ukraine in a war that has already killed untold numbers of civilians and displaced millions. 

“I strongly condemn all the violence that is happening. Violence is not acceptable, nor justified, ever,” she said.

“It is hard to see my country go to war but faith comforted me in the hardest moments during the past weeks.

“People ask me how I can still believe in God when I see the atrocities of war. Today, I believe God gave us free will.

“Some people use it to serve their pride but we can also use it to work for peace.”

On Saturday evening, during a two-and-a-half-hour solemn Easter Mass at St John’s co-Cathedral, Archbishop Scicluna baptised and administered first holy communion and confirmation to 14 adults from 10 countries, all of whom had decided to join the Catholic faith in the past months.

Alisa says her parents raised her as an agnostic, away from all religions. Until last November, she did not believe in God or any religion but says she used to feel “something was missing”.

“I never thought it was religion. For me, religion was for the weak-minded people who are not so bright and choose the easy way out. But I still felt very empty and would have a longing for something,” Alisa explained.

It is hard to see my country go to war but faith comforted me in the hardest moments

“I started to feel a great sense of meaninglessness until it became too much and, then, in November I started contemplating suicide. I never attempted it but I was planning it.”

After speaking to her friends, some of whom shared her feelings, Alisa says she started to believe that “God could really be working through her”.

It was not Alisa’s Maltese fiancée, Brandon, baptised a Catholic, who urged her into the faith.

On the contrary, her newfound enthusiasm led him to rediscover “the beauty of his religion” until, one Sunday in January, they decided to go to Mass.

“It felt like going home,” Alisa said when describing the first time she walked into a church in her life.

“I remember back in Russia we used to play out in the snow in freezing cold weather. As soon as we would step back inside our home, we would feel embraced by that warm, fuzzy feeling of family and a hot meal,” she reminisced.

For me, that’s the feeling of going home. And that is exactly what I felt when I walked into that church in Rabat for the first time.”

They have been going to Mass every Sunday since and she took up weekly catechism meetings with a Maltese priest.

“Everything started to fall into place organically and harmoniously. I would go to our weekly meetings wanting to ask questions to the priest and he would answer me before I could even pose the question,” she said.

“I will be in Mass and the homily would feel like it’s speaking exactly about what I’m going through that week.”

Up until a few months ago, Alisa used to look at the pope as just “another person in charge of something”. But, two weeks ago, as the Argentine pontiff graced the streets of Malta, she went along enthusiastically with thousands of other young people in St George’s Square, Valletta to watch him.

“His blessing from the balcony felt very warm, almost magical,” she said.

“I used to think faith is limiting and oppressive but I now realise it’s extremely freeing.

“Knowing that everything is forgiven made me feel absolutely free, not because I feel I can do anything now but because I know that, whatever I did wrongly, I don’t have to carry its burden with me.

“And, so, I’m free to love.”