BRAINTREE -- The Archdiocese of Boston is in possession of what is quite possibly the largest collection of sacramental records in the U.S.

Tucked away in the archdiocese's Pastoral Center in Braintree are records of 6.5 million baptisms, marriages, First Communions, confirmations, and funerals. To Violet Hurst, director of the Archdiocese of Boston's Archive and Library, every record tells a story. Many of those stories are of immigrants. They brought their Catholic faith to an unfamiliar land, establishing parishes, schools, beneficial societies, and feasts celebrated to this day.

Hurst had an idea -- what if she looked at a single marriage record of two immigrants in the archdiocese and researched their lives? From a few names scribbled on weathered paper, two lives emerged -- Bridget and Joseph Wolcott of County Galway, Ireland, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, respectively. Joseph Wolcott was a grocer, and Bridget Wolcott was a domestic servant who married around the turn of the 20th century.

"I see this story as a call to action to have conversations now with our communities and our family members to try to fill in those gaps that might be in our own family history," Hurst said.

She spoke at the Pastoral Center on Sept. 29, two days after the 112th annual World Day of Migrants and Refugees was observed by the Catholic Church on Sept. 27.

"The story of the Catholic Church within not only the Archdiocese of Boston but within the United States is the story of immigrants, the story of migrants, those who arrived and the sacrifices they made and what they went through," said Lorna DesRoses, Archdiocese of Boston evangelization consultant for ethnic communities and herself the daughter of Haitian immigrants.

Hurst and fellow archivist Savannah Miller gave a presentation on immigration stories from throughout the archdiocese's history.

Two of Boston's shepherds -- Bishop Jean-Louis Lefebvre de Cheverus, of France; and Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, of the Azores -- were immigrants. Bishop Cheverus fled the violent anti-clericalism of the French Revolution and served New England's nascent Catholic population before returning to his native country. Cardinal Medeiros briefly dropped out of school at age 14, sweeping the floors of a Fall River textile mill to support his family. Such vivid details, Miller said, are absent from most sacramental records. Little is known of the individual lives of many clergy, religious, and laypeople who came to Boston over the centuries.

"We hope that you can see echoes and reflections of your own migration stories, or those that are meaningful to you in these stories from the past," Miller said.

The day's celebrations began with a Mass celebrated by Bishop Cristiano Barbosa in the Pastoral Center's Bethany Chapel. Bishop Barbosa was born in Brazil, the descendant of Italians who migrated there in search of a better life. The Vatican established the World Day of Migrants in response to the mass exodus of Italians from their homeland.

"The spread of Catholicism in this country and in other countries is due to the presence of these people who left everything behind in search for a better life and continue to do so even today," Bishop Barbosa said in his homily.

The bishop said the reasons for migration haven't changed over the years, though currently there are over 300 million displaced people around the world. Many are children.

"They are not numbers," he said. "Each one of them are a life with a history, a story that has to be known and told. And it's the duty of the Church, since the beginning of what we call Catholic Social Doctrine, to welcome migrants."

Over 20 Pastoral Center employees, including clergy, religious, and laypeople, were born outside the U.S. The archdiocese's Multicultural Ministries team enlisted Ann Gennaro, communications and content specialist of the archdiocese's Secretariat for Evangelization and Discipleship, to produce a short film highlighting migration stories from a few Boston-area Catholics. She thought of her own great-grandfather.

"What really struck me is while, yes, we each individually have our own stories, we are one Church," she said. "We are one family. We are one body in Christ."

She hopes that those who watch the video think of the similarities between their stories and those of the interview subjects.

"Our stories are the human story, and we are all brought into this family through Jesus Christ, and so that's the inspiration behind this video," she said.

Efren Rodriguez, father of Multicultural Ministries Director Wendy Mejia, fled El Salvador during that country's civil war. Educators like him were targets of death squads. While living temporarily in Mexico, he would pray at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

"We feel that the Virgin Mary was with us all the time," he said in the video.

The father of Aldona Lingertat, director of St. John's Seminary's Theological Institute, fled Lithuania during World War II, when the country was under Nazi and Soviet occupation. Had her father stayed, he would've been deported to Siberia.

Deacon Nadim Daou left Lebanon in 1977, during the country's civil war. His older brother was shot twice. Thinking of his own experience as a migrant, he welcomes newcomers to his parish, St. Anthony Maronite Church in Lawrence.

"Coming to the United States was not my piece of cake," Marie Christine Daou, Deacon Daou's wife, who came to the U.S. in 1990, said in the video.

She added, "The Blessed Mother was always my go-to for consolation, for loneliness."

Luke Hill's father came on a ship from England alone at age 10. Hill's great-grandmother came from County Leitrim, Ireland.

"When the Bible talks about the widow and the orphan and the alien, those are my people," said Hill, now a parishioner at St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Roxbury. "That's my dad."