New arrivals give major boost to church attendance in Toronto

VANCOUVER—The Archdiocese of Toronto is building one brand new church per year to keep from bursting at the seams.

“We have opened what we call a mega-church, a large 1,000-person church, once a year for the last 14 years,” said Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto.

Three more are on the drawing board. Cardinal Collins told Global News the major boost in Mass attendance is largely thanks to immigration.

“The Archdiocese of Toronto is certainly very much influenced by tremendous immigration from all around the world,” he said. Mass is celebrated in 37 languages every Sunday in its 225 parishes.

Communications director Neil MacCarthy described what the archdiocese is doing to keep up with ever-increasing numbers of faithful.

“The diversity of the population has certainly expanded significantly in the last 30 years,” he said. “It’s safe to say since 1980 we have been building, on average, a little more than a church each year.”

Immigrants accounted for 46 per cent of the total population of Toronto in 2011, according to the most recent available numbers from Statistics Canada. That year the province of Ontario was home to just over half of all immigrants in Canada.

MacCarthy said most newcomers to the Archdiocese of Toronto have recently been arriving from China, Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and India. “We often refer to the Archdiocese of Toronto as the United Nations of our faith.”

He added the construction boom has more to do with reaching out to growing flocks in the suburbs than with ensuring each ethnic group has its own place of worship nearby. Of Canada’s 50 most populous cities, 10 are in the Archdiocese of Toronto.

“These communities grew by a collective total of 404,705 from 2006 to 2011,” he said. “It would be like inserting the entire population of Halifax, N.S.”

Cardinal Collins welcomes the immigrants, saying the diversity means “we have a richness in this diocese.” However building and staffing a new church each year is not a walk in the park.

“The fact is many parishes that previously would have had two or three priests in residence aren’t in that situation anymore,” MacCarthy explained.

Many parishes are hiring lay pastoral associates to help out with the work while facing the challenge of bringing in priests and nuns who can speak languages other than English and French.

It may be one of the reasons Cardinal Collins has named vocations one of five goals in a pastoral plan he revealed in 2013.

“We’re opening a parish a year, so we need to have priests,” he said. “We need to look at our formation program. We’ve been doing that, restructuring somewhat the way in which we work,” in the archdiocese’s four seminaries and numerous monasteries and convents.

Cardinal Collins also has to make sure they can fund it all. He launched an ambitious Family of Faith campaign with a $105-million goal, $20 million of it to be set aside for new churches. Within one year, 88 per cent of the goal has been raised.

“For many active Catholics who are new to Canada, their faith community isn’t just a spiritual hub but also a community hub,” said MacCarthy.

Many immigrants bring a strong awareness of faith with them. “As I like to say, people come early and stay late. That’s always a good sign when you’re trying to foster community and strengthen the Body of Christ among us.”

This is part one of a three-part series on how a steady stream of immigrants in Canada affects Catholic parishes. Read part two here.