Kenney met with about a dozen bishops in Toronto just as the conference got under way. Sources inside the closed-door meeting said he urged the bishops to make sure Catholic parishes are first in line to sponsor the extra refugees out of Damascus.

The conference was “an historic step in the church’s commitment to refugees,” said Office of Refugees of the Archdiocese of Toronto executive director Martin Mark.

There are 22 Catholic dioceses with active refugee sponsorship programs in Canada — far fewer than there were 30 years ago when churches spearheaded the drive to rescue Vietnamese boat people.

But the challenge is not to reproduce the Catholic response to refugees of 30 years ago, said Carl Hetu of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. This time the church needs to build a long-term, sustainable infrastructure to respond to ongoing refugee crises around the world.

“We were leaders in the past,” said Hetu. “We have to be even more leaders in the future. We have no choice.”

Newly ordained Bishop Vincent Nguyen presided at his first Mass as a bishop at the conference. Nguyen came to Canada from a refugee camp after fleeing Vietnam with 19 others on a boat.

While the conference focussed on the nearly two million Iraqi refugees either trapped inside Iraq or languishing in Jordan and Syria, the commitment to re-energize refugee work in the Catholic community is a commitment to all refugees, said Mark.

Being involved in the lives of refugees can’t help but make parishes more solidly grounded in their faith, said Dominican Sister Tariance de Yonker from the diocese of Prince George in British Columbia.

“It’s the basic Christian message. It’s the love your neighbour. It’s the opportunity for us to make a difference in people’s lives,” said De Yonker.

Prince George Bishop Gerald Weisner has urged de Yonker to help parishes with sponsorship.

Former refugee Ruth Mathiang came to the conference with a choir scheduled to sing at one of the Masses, and was grateful that Catholics seemed so ready to take refugee work seriously.

“It is important. I don’t think enough people are sponsoring refugees,” she said.

A Sudanese refugee rescued from a camp in Kenya nine years ago by the World University Service of Canada, Mathiang said the opportunity to come to Canada has changed her life.

“I think some people assume the United Nations is taking care of all that,” said Mathiang.

Part of the problem for parishes that want to help refugees is the bureaucratic hoops and long delays involved in refugee sponsorship, said diocese of London refugee program director Gilbert Iyamuremye. The slowness of Canada’s refugee processing is making a mockery of the Canadian commitment, he said.

“How can you keep people’s motivation for four to five years?” he asked. “How can this be a protection program?”

Once people understand why their parish is called to sponsor refugees, then neither the financial commitment nor the volunteer hours needed to assist a family settling into the community are a problem, said Iyamuremye.

“Once people understand that it is a Christian duty, then the money comes,” he said.