This is an excerpt from a homily given Jan. 15 during a Mass celebrating the World Day of Migrants and Refugees at St. Matthew’s church.

Dear friends: except for our Indigenous brothers and sisters, who have inhabited this land for thousands of years, we are all newcomers, immigrants or refugees, or descendants of them.

People have settled here for different reasons: some from fleeing poverty and economic hardship; some escaping from religious or political persecution; and others simply searching for freedom and a better future for their families.

In fact, for well over a century, Canada has been among the most open and welcoming countries to migrants and refugees, a fact confirmed by our readiness to accept tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East in recent years.

With regard to refugees in particular, the Catholic Church has been an ardent advocate on behalf of the rights of refugees, as has the Archdiocese of Vancouver and its faithful. I wish to thank all of you who sponsor, help to settle, and serve both the physical and spiritual needs of the newly arrived, whether they are here for a temporary or seasonal stay, or whether they are immigrants and refugees who will settle permanently in Canada. You yourselves have become “migrants with the migrants and refugees with the refugees.”

I am especially grateful to the countless number of individuals and 39 parishes which assist in our Refugee Sponsorship Program, which is administered by the Archdiocese’s Office of Service and Justice. In the last 20 years, this Program has helped to settle thousands of refugees, including approximately 1,000 in the last five years.

Besides these gestures of assistance, which are prompted by a sincere solidarity for which I thank you, we also have to think about the longer term: what must we now do to bring together even more intentionally the rich cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity which makes up our local Church? Nobody wants to eliminate these differences; they are essential to our being “catholic” – open to all traditions. Instead, we should concentrate our efforts on creating a truly inter-cultural community of faith, in which the various traditions enrich one another through interaction rather than just by standing respectfully side-by-side.

I would like to address two particular challenges that face us. In the past, I have spoken of the horrors of human trafficking and the unjust exploitation of seasonal and temporary workers, but today I would like to say something about the pain of family separation and, as the Holy Father has indicated as the theme of this year’s World Day of Migrants and Refugees, the plight of child migrants.

One of the greatest challenges that many migrants face is separation from children and families. You know the particular difficulties encountered by temporary and seasonal workers separated from families back home. They need our solidarity and pastoral attention.

But those who plan to stay in Canada also face difficulties. Such separation, which can last for many years, has a detriment on all, but particularly on children and young people. In our own country, the fees required for permanent residence status, the numerous steps involved, and the slow administrative processes are major factors causing long delays. We need to take the initiative to work for social policies and legislation that will overcome these obstacles since family unity is crucial if both the Church and society are to be healthy.

Especially across wide swaths of Africa and the Middle East, there are tens of thousands of child migrants, often without parents, who are in desperate need of our attention. Let us remember that the Child Jesus was himself a refugee, forced to flee persecution in his own land, to seek asylum in Egypt. This same story is being repeated in our own day. It is my prayer that we will respond to Pope Francis’ call to us in this year’s Message:

“We are primarily concerned with adopting every possible measure to guarantee the protection and safety of child migrants, because ‘these boys and girls often end up on the street abandoned to themselves and prey to unscrupulous exploiters who often transform them into the object of physical, moral and sexual violence’ (Benedict XVI, Message for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, 2008).