Ottawa’s plan to take in a record 1.2 million immigrants between now and 2023, just under 15 per cent of them refugees, faces some serious COVID-era challenges, according to the churches and other organizations who sponsor over 20,000 refugees per year.

COVID-19 has almost completely choked off the flow of refugees to Canada, which has refugee sponsors worried about the backlog building up as they wait for travel restrictions to ease so they can start again helping new arrivals ease into jobs, apartments and communities.

OTTAWA -- Canadian churches and refugee advocates want a federal court to declare an agreement with the United States null and void, saying it is putting refugees seeking asylum in Canada at risk because the U.S. is not a safe country for them.

VATICAN – Liberating the poor, the oppressed and the persecuted is an integral part of what God wants his church to do, Pope Francis said.

NAIROBI, Kenya (CNS) – As it loses its grip in the Middle East, the Islamic State is finding a foothold in Somalia, said a bishop who oversees the Catholic Church in the troubled country.

ROME – With so much suffering, poverty and exploitation in the world, missionary work must also include reaching out to people whose hearts are closed to receiving immigrants and refugees, Pope Francis told Jesuits in Myanmar.

More than half the Canadian population thinks the Rohingya crisis, which has created a refugee camp of over 600,000 in the Bangladeshi border town of Cox’s Bazar, is “not Canada’s problem,” according to an Angus Reid Institute poll. 

VATICAN – Catholic universities need to study the root causes of forced migration and ways to counter the discrimination and xenophobic reactions it provokes in so many traditionally Christian nations, Pope Francis said.