TORONTO - Three years ago Catholic commitment to refugees took a major step forward with a national conference of Catholic refugee offices. It’s time to take another step forward, Office for Refugees Archdiocese of Toronto director Martin Mark said.

ORAT will host a four-day national gathering of refugee ministries at the Toronto Crowne Plaza Airport Hotel Dec. 3 to 6. Mark predicts more than double the 70 delegates to the last refugee conference in 2010 will attend “With One Voice — We Are the Hope.”

While three years ago the focus was on organizing parishes to help Iraqi refugees, many of them Christian, this time around the refugee ministries will be finding ways to defend the civic sponsorship program as the federal government constantly adjusts its regulations and procedures for sponsoring refugees.

Recently Citizenship and Immigration Canada issued new forms that recognized refugees are expected to fill out if they wish to come to Canada. The guide for how to fill out the forms runs over 50 pages, said Mark. The Canadian government is also making its refugee forms available only over the Internet.

Not many people in refugee camps have access to the Internet and the traumatized and desperate may find a form with a 50-page guide daunting, Mark said.

The history of Catholic sponsorship of refugees has been through emotional waves of boom and bust, beginning with an outpouring of parish-based generosity more than 30 years ago when the plight of Vietnamese boat people inspired Canada’s civic refugee sponsorship system. As the boats faded from the south Pacific seas, Catholic sponsorship waned. The crisis in Iraq which sent two million refugees into Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and elsewhere revived Catholic interest in sponsorship in 2006.

With the upcoming conference, Mark hopes to ensure the sustainability of a national network of Catholic sponsorship agencies.

While there is still a major problem of unsettled Iraqi refugees, more than half the world’s 42 million refugees are in Africa and there are many opportunities for parishes to contribute to solutions — and not all of them will tax a parish’s budget, Mark said.

There are 600 refugees in Ghana, in a UNHCR camp outside of the capital Accra. With a concerted effort, Canadian Catholic refugee sponsors could close that camp, said Mark.

The conference will begin with Mass celebrated with Cardinal Thomas Collins.

To participate in the conference, call Patricia Cross at (905) 889-5724 or e-mail her at pcpat@rogers.com.