In what will be a record year for refugees finding a new home in the Archdiocese of Toronto, an 18-hour flurry of paperwork may have made the difference for as many as 700 Syrian refugees.

ABOARD THE PAPAL FLIGHT FROM GREECE – When an aide suggested Pope Francis offer to fly some Syrian refugees back to Rome with him, the pope said he agreed immediately because it was "an inspiration of the Holy Spirit."

MYTILENE, Greece – Pope Francis' five-hour visit to Greece ended with him offering safe passage to Italy to 12 Syrian Muslims, half under the age of 18.

MYTILENE, Greece – Although their speeches were punctuated with policy appeals, Pope Francis and Orthodox leaders focused their visit to the island of Lesbos on the faces, stories and drawings of refugees.

OTTAWA – The Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace has received $5.95 million in additional funding from the federal government’s Syria Emergency Relief Fund.

VATICAN CITY – In a "humanitarian and ecumenical gesture," not a political one, Pope Francis is to join Orthodox leaders in personally meeting with hundreds of refugees and migrants stranded in Greece, the Vatican spokesman said.

VATICAN CITY – Before St. John Paul II arrived in Greece in 2001 there were protests by Orthodox faithful and an all-night prayer vigil by Orthodox monks on Mount Athos, praying that the pope would not come.

VATICAN CITY – Pope Francis' trip to Lesbos, Greece, April 16 comes at a frightening and critical time for tens of thousands of refugees and migrants waiting and wondering where they will end up, said members of Catholic aid agencies.

VATICAN CITY – Hundreds of Christian families are returning to Sadad, Syria, more than two years after their city was overrun by terrorists, a local official said.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis will celebrate the Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper with young refugees in Castelnuovo di Porto, north of Rome.

BEIRUT - The newly ordained bishop for the Syriac Catholic Church in Canada pledged to make his first priority the suffering and spiritual needs of beleaguered Syriacs seeking refuge in Canada.

On their 37th day in Canada, the Peters family from Liberia found themselves surrounded by Goans, carrying gifts of bread and wine up to an Irish-Canadian cardinal.

TORONTO - With doctors about to become "agents of death" when assisted suicide comes to Canada in three months, politicians and society should instead be focussed on bringing comfort to the dying, said Cardinal Thomas Collins.

BEIRUT - When Syrian refugees arrive in Lebanon, help begins with a phone call to the U.N. refugee agency -- if they can get through.

TORONTO - Doctors are extending efforts to regain full medical coverage for all refugees even as the federal government backed down on health insurance cuts to one class of refugees.

"Basically it leaves people sicker and dead," Dr. Katherine Rouleau, a family physician at Toronto's St. Michael's Hospital, told The Catholic Register just three days after cuts to the interim federal health program ceased coverage for medications, many diagnostic tests, prosthetics, vision care and dental care for most refugees. "That is not an option, so the fight will go on pretty fiercely."

Rouleau is one of hundreds of doctors who have protested the cuts under the banner of Canadian Doctors for Refugee Care.