A never-ending crisis as Church marks World Day of Refugees

The Archdiocese of Toronto will mark the 112th World Day of Migrants and Refugees with a special Mass at Pickering’s St. Isaac Jogues Church Sept. 27.

There, Auxiliary Bishop Vincent Nguyen will preside at the 11:30 a.m. liturgy that aims to highlight the Church’s historic and ongoing work with newcomers.

While the annual observance has been a fixture in the Church’s calendar for more than a century, this year gives Catholics another pertinent reminder of the struggles faced by those forced to flee from persecution. Parishes throughout the archdiocese are being encouraged to mark the day with special prayers and recognizing the refugees and sponsorship committees active in their own communities.

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Nguyen’s presence carries particular weight. Having fled communist Vietnam by boat across the South China Sea himself, his family would survive the journey, spending seven days at sea on a voyage that hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese would make, and many thousands would die attempting.

“(Nguyen) was fortunate to be picked up by a fishing boat and brought to Japan before he immigrated to Canada. It’s a fantastic story, and so we're very privileged to have him celebrate the Mass — I think it will be touching for people,” said Deacon Rudy Ovcjak, the director of ORAT, the archdiocese's Office for Refugees of the Archdiocese of Toronto.

A special program and reception will follow in the parish hall where parishioners and guests can hear about the work ORAT does to welcome and support refugees. 

Whoever attends will do so under this year’s theme “Even Just One of These Children." Taken from Matthew 18:5 — “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” — the theme focuses particularly on children and minors facing conflict, persecution, poverty and other hardships.

Ovcjak spoke to the unique call that Pope Leo XIV’s theme invites Catholics to participate. 

“ Even just one; that reminds us that we don't have the solution to the global refugee crisis to make a difference. We can focus on the single individual who’s displaced, and that's what matters,” he said. 

“Often we can be easily overcome by the magnitude of this crisis and feel inept at doing something. I think this makes it manageable. It also reminds us that the children are as much a part of this story as the adults who have fled their homelands or lost their homes, schools, friends and hopes for the future.” 

Set to speak during the program is Lena Diab, Canada's minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship. Cardinal Frank Leo and his office have already met with Diab on issues including foreign clergy and the Private Sponsorship of Refugees program. 

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It’s just one of the many areas of work that the Office of Refugees has been focused on in recent years. The director shared that their day-to-day observations continue to show integration challenges for newcomers as being significant, with the current economy making for notable difficulties in securing stable employment after arrival. These realities are worsened by the high cost of rental housing. 

A certain erosion of public support for  refugee resettlement is also being felt firsthand, with recent polling showing that many Canadians feel immigration levels are too high and are concerned about integration and demographic makeup.

“The Government of Canada has responded to public concerns around high immigration levels, and has cut permanent resident targets across all immigration programs, whether that's economic, family reunification or refugee resettlement. What we've seen now is a significant cut in arrivals, but when coupled with a large backlog of privately sponsored refugees, we're seeing lengthy processing times from Immigration Canada,” he explained. 

“What used to take at best one and a half years for Immigration Canada to process a privately sponsored refugee application now takes six years, and that is an intolerable length of time to expect refugees to live in, oftentimes when they already live in very precarious circumstances.” 

In turn, that cultural climate can affect Catholics’ willingness to sponsor refugees, although Ovcjak believes it may be a matter of misunderstanding rather than mere stubbornness. He reiterated the Statistics Canada finding that in a six-year period and after a full year of publicly funded support, 93 per cent of government-assisted refugees go on social assistance compared to only 16.7 per cent for those privately sponsored. 

“That is a massive gap that I don't think Canadians are aware of. When people think of refugees, they may bundle all of immigration together and see student visa holders or temporary foreign workers as refugees, when privately sponsored refugees only represent about four per cent of the total,” he said. 

Hoping to provide further proof of ORAT’s important work will be Sept. 27's newcomer testimony, a powerful way that refugees are being seen not as statistics, but as real people with unique struggles and hope. This year’s speaker is a young Togolese man sponsored by St. Isaac Jogues Parish who was selected by ORAT on a mission trip. Despite being born and raised in a refugee camp with no family link in Canada, within his first year in Canada, he passed his registered nurse licensing exam and now works as an ER nurse at Toronto’s St. Michael’s Hospital. 

As Ovcjak reflects, it stands as one powerful story among many, proving that a life-saving welcome can go as far as coming full circle in allowing one to save lives in return.

Even as the World Day of Migrants and Refugees traces back to Pope Pius X’s call for prayer in 1914, the current refugee crisis remains immense, and with the numbers not looking to shrink, the office understands that it can feel easy to despair.

However, the antidote may lie in this year’s theme. The Church’s call to respond to suffering humanity, as reminded during this year’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees, invites us to act rather than give up.

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This year particularly, Ovcjak hopes that special attention will be given to the ongoing and widespread persecution of Christians across the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, sharing that Western Catholics have a particular obligation to help their Christian brothers and sisters forced to flee, while still helping all who suffer.

“ Jesus said, ‘The poor you always have with you,’ and that doesn't mean that we stop and do nothing, but rather see it as an invitation of the Lord to respond. I think this, in the same way, we have an obligation to look at the experience of refugees, their continued suffering throughout the world, and just be aware of those situations,” he said 

A version of this article appeared in the September 27, 2026 issue of The Catholic Register with the headline "A never-ending crisis as Church marks World Day of Refugees".