Mark is in the Middle East now meeting with refugee families and refugee organizations in Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. Over the last three years Toronto Catholics have sponsored more than 100 Iraqi individuals and families for resettlement in Canada. With the war inside Syria escalating, it is time to replenish the list of refugees to be sponsored, Mark told The Catholic Register while in Geneva to meet with Catholic agencies and NGOs.
“We ran out of (Iraqi refugee) cases actually earlier this year,” Mark said. “I think January was the last time we could still go to the database.”
Parishes and religious communities are still concerned about refugees in the Middle East and want to offer hope to both Christians and non-Christians forced out of their homes by the war in Syria, he said.
Mark plans to interview at least 40 families while in the region to determine whether they are candidates for resettlement in Canada. He will also meet with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and other organizations serving Syrian refugees. The refugee population has ballooned by more than one million since the beginning of the year. There are now more than 1.6 million Syrians stuck in the surrounding countries of Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt, according to the UNHCR.
It’s important for ORAT to assemble its own list of refugees to be sponsored rather than relying on Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s lists, said Mark.
“ORAT is conscious that persecuted religious minorities do not get even proportional assistance in order to gain a durable solution (such as resettlement),” Mark wrote in an e-mail.
The federal government’s refugee priorities seem strangely blind to Christians, according to Mark.
“If you want to sponsor a Bhutanese, or you want to sponsor a Burmese, or you want to sponsor an Iraqi Muslim, yes they can help you with some limited number of cases. But persecuted Christians? It’s zero,” he said. “We are not sponsoring only Christians, but not to have even one case? That is not what we want.”
As Mark assembles his database of potential sponsorship cases he is aware of the frustrations of parishes that have waited years to greet Iraqi refugees they initially sponsored in 2009 and 2010. Many of them, including the Makhoo family sponsored by Cardinal Thomas Collins, are just arriving in Canada now. He has vowed to get a realistic timeline commitment from Immigration officials for the next round of sponsorships.
“People don’t like it when Immigration Canada says these cases will be processed within a year and then three years later we have to wait,” he said.
Not all the families Mark will meet or have recommended to him will find sponsors in the archdiocese of Toronto or the nationwide Catholic sponsorship network. Mark will make decisions about who can be sponsored within three months after returning to Canada in July.
Sponsoring refugees is only one way the Church in Canada is responding to the crisis in Syria. Several Canadian organizations are trying to help Syrian refugees where they are now.
“This situation is getting quite out of hand,” said Catholic Near East Welfare Association of Canada executive director Carl Hetu. “There are not enough resources. This conflict is not about to end, everybody agrees on that.”
CNEWA is concentrating on aiding Christian refugees through its partners in the region, including Caritas Internationalis, the Melkite Church, Greek Orthodox Church and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd.
The Syrian situation is not a precise parallel to the Iraqi exodus following the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. So far, the conflict has not become as bitterly sectarian, Hetu said.
“You cannot clam there is a systematic attack on Christians right now in Syria. Nobody can claim that,” Hetu said.
Syriac Catholic Bishop Gregory Melki of Jerusalem has warned there’s a growing danger of extremism as foreign fighters pour into Syria.
“We are very anxious when we remember what happened to the Christians in Iraq. We fear the same thing will happen to the Christians in Syria,” Melki told the Catholic News Service in May.
The Canada Foodgrains Bank, whose members include the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, has directed $3.1 million to ensure 45,000 people hit by the crisis in Syria get enough to eat.
With the help of Popular Aid for Relief and Development, Foodgrains is distributing food vouchers to help refugees buy everything from basic cooking utensils to rice, chickpeas, lentils, canned tuna, tomato paste and milk powder. Canadian Jesuits International has launched an appeal on behalf of the Jesuit Refugee Service, which runs field kitchens serving 20,000 meals a day. The JRS also provides medicine to the chronically ill and operates a clinic in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.
Syrian Jesuit Father Nawras Sammour, in charge of the JRS effort in the region, said the situation “is not calming down at all.”
“As Christians, we have no right to be desperate. We have no right to give in. We don’t have the right to say nothing can be done,” Sammour told Canadian Jesuits International.
To contribute to the JRS through Canadian Jesuits International go to www.canadianjesuitsinternational. ca or call 1-800- 448-2148. To help CNEWA’s Syrian Appeal go to www.cnewa.ca. To find out how your parish anywhere in Canada can sponsor a refugee, call ORAT at (416) 645-0827 ext. 104.