World Day of Migrants & Refugees – Sunday, September 26, 2021

People throughout the Archdiocese of Toronto will mark the World Day of Migrants & Refugees on Sunday, September 26, by praying for those have been forced to flee their homeland.

Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop of Toronto, will celebrate a special Mass for migrants and refugees on September 26 at 5 p.m. from St. Michael’s Cathedral Basilica. You will be able to view a livestream of that Mass here. 

If you want to learn more about World Day of Migrants & Refugees, this video features the Holy Father inviting every baptized person to feel part of a single Church, a single home, a single family. The video contains the personal testimony of migrants who feel part of this “we” after they were welcomed into a parish.

In another video, Pope Francis asks the Church “to go out into the streets in the existential peripheries to heal those who are wounded and to seek those who are lost,” fearlessly and without discrimination.

During World Day of Migrants & Refugees, we remember in a special way the many Christians who are refugees because of religious persecution. Sadly, one-in-seven Christians around the world experience religious persecution.

Below are a number of resources to help you learn more about the plight of Christians who face persecution because of their faith:

• In this video, Archbishop Lawrence Saldanha, Archbishop Emeritus of Lahore, Pakistan, discusses the terrible persecution faced by Christians in Pakistan, as well as the many hardships endured by those who have fled to Thailand to escape religious extremism.
  
  
• This short documentary brings attention to the suffering of the Christian community in Pakistan.
  
  
• Last year the Archdiocese of Toronto hosted this educational webinar on the plight that many of Christians experience around the world.

UPDATE: You can watch Cardinal Collins' homily for World Day of Migrants and Refugees here.