Catholics from coast to coast are rallying to answer a call to help resettle Christian Pakistani refugees stuck in Bangkok.
At least eight dioceses, including Vancouver, have pledged to raise money and gather volunteers to give a new Canadian home to up to 65 families eligible for resettlement.
The pledges of support come in response to a mission trip to Bangkok by the Archdiocese of Toronto Office for Refugees to vet candidates for resettlement.
That trip spurred a Catholic Register series about the community of Pakistanis in the Thai capital on the run from their country’s harsh blasphemy laws.
“When their suffering is brought to (Canadian Catholics’) attention, as was done through The Catholic Register, people want to respond,” said Office for Refugees director Deacon Rudy Ovcjak. “You can’t help but be moved by the suffering of this community — to know not only their suffering in Pakistan but their ongoing suffering in Bangkok.”
As a major sponsorship agreement holder with the federal government, the Archdiocese of Toronto has pledged to sponsor 18 of the 65 verified refugee families. Toronto has also heard from refugee sponsorship officials and parishes in the dioceses of Montreal, Grouard-McLennan (northwestern Alberta), Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax and Peterborough.
Ovcjak expected that number to increase following the Sept. 23-27 Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops annual plenary meetings in Cornwall, Ont. A letter appealing for sponsorship help has gone out to every bishop in Canada from the CCCB, and Toronto Archbishop Cardinal Thomas Collins planned to address the issue with his fellow bishops.
The case for sponsoring the Pakistanis rests on their suffering, said Ovcjak. “They’re hunted down by the Thai Immigration Police and placed into hugely overcrowded detention centres. And there they stay,” Ovcjak said.
“Their only remedy out of that is two choices – either go back to Pakistan where the likely prospect of death awaits you, or you hope for assistance from societies in the West to resettle them. Many of them have been languishing in those detention centres for years on end.”
Antoinette Godbout, refugee sponsorship co-ordinator with the Calgary Catholic Immigration Society, said her organization has pledged to sponsor three families.
“When we hear about a group that is being persecuted and also not noticed – not being recognized by other governments, by media, by in general world attention – I feel extra compassion and inspiration to reach out to those people,” she said.
