ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA - Yeshi Wubet carries a scrap of hope around in her purse, folded and unfolded to the point of fragility. It’s a letter from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees office in Addis Ababa dated July 7, 2014 and signed by Assistant Representative (Protection) Milagros Leynes.

DOLLO ADO, ETHIOPIA - Fifty-one year old Somali refugee Abdi Mahdi is one of about 25 students taking an English class offered by the Jesuit Refugee Service in the Kobe refugee camp, about three kilometres from the border between Ethiopia and Somalia.

MANCHESTER, England - The European Union must adopt a common asylum policy "without delay" because it is unacceptable for refugees to "drown and suffocate" at the fringes of the bloc, said the European bishops.

Read our three-part special report from Africa here:

Pictures of a dead three-year-old Syrian child washed ashore in Turkey made the world weep, but will little Alan Kurdi’s lifeless body move world populations and their governments to act?

PARIS - Europe’s refugee crisis has inspired faith communities across the continent to open their doors to the newcomers and advocate for more state and private help, but the urgency of their calls and the depth of responses to them vary from country to country.

TORONTO - The Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, the most senior Catholic bishop in Syria, says the West must share responsibility for the fate of three-year-old Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler pictured drowned on a Turkish beach on newspaper front pages worldwide.

TORONTO - One hundred more families, three-million more dollars and an infinite well of compassion will be the Archdiocese of Toronto’s response to photos of three-year-old Alan Kurdi’s tiny, lifeless body lying on a Turkish beach.

VATICAN CITY - Given the ongoing crisis of people fleeing from war and poverty, Pope Francis asked every parish and religious community in Europe to take in a family of refugees as a concrete sign of hope and God's mercy.

OTTAWA - As the world reacted with horror Sept. 3 to the picture of a drowned little migrant boy, Canada’s bishops published a social justice document pleading for generosity.

OXFORD, England - Catholic aid agencies have urged Europeans not to turn against migrants seeking refuge from Syria and other countries, in what media reports describe as the continent's greatest refugee movement since the Second World War.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has boldly urged the European Union to respond immediately and compassionately to the region’s largest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

LONDON - Images of drowned refugees are causing the British people to cry out for a more generous response to the migrant crisis engulfing Europe, said an English cardinal.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis joined Austrian church leaders in praying for the 71 refugees found dead in an abandoned truck near Vienna and he condemned the smuggling of migrants as an offense "against the whole human family."

QUITO, Ecuador - Carlos Leon and Carmen Barrera thought the worst was over when they escaped the death threats in Colombia.