On the last day of a week-long trip to Spain focused on irregular immigration, Pope Leo XIV told migrants gathered at a reception centre on Tenerife that “all of us are migrants.”
The Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic, have become a major entry point for tens of thousands of people making the dangerous journey to Europe in search of a better life. The leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics used the visit to urge greater support for migrants and tougher action against human traffickers, as immigration continues to fuel political debate across the continent.
Speaking to a crowd of migrants at Las Raices, a former military barracks turned reception centre once criticized for severe overcrowding, the pope said: “In a sense, all of us are migrants, for we are all pilgrims on our way to our heavenly homeland.”
“Let us help make this journey more humane for everyone by contributing in whatever way we can,” he added. Later on Friday, June 12, the pope is scheduled to lead an open-air mass at the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, expected to draw tens of thousands of worshippers.
Earlier in the week, Leo visited Madrid and Barcelona before arriving on Thursday in Gran Canaria, another island in the archipelago. There, he condemned “indifference” toward migrants and placed a wreath on the sea at the port of Arguineguin to remember the thousands who have perished attempting to reach the Canaries.
“Human dignity has no passport,” he said at the dockside, moments before blessing a faded blue cross crafted from wood taken from a migrant boat. “Monsters lurk in these seas… traffickers who enslave women and children, and those whose indifference allows the poor to be swallowed up by exploitation or forgetfulness,” he said.
According to the International Organization for Migration, nearly 1,200 people died or disappeared last year while making the journey from Africa to the Canary Islands, making it one of the deadliest migration routes in the world.
The pope said Europe, where many governments have tightened border policies under pressure from far-right parties, “cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves.”
He added that the tragedy must “appeal to the conscience” of the countries migrants are fleeing, as well as the nations they pass through, where poverty, conflict, and trafficking gangs often trap vulnerable people. “We really value this visit. It’s very important for us at such a critical moment,” Mohamed Amjahdi, who arrived on the islands from Morocco as a 17-year-old on a boat, told AFP in Arguineguin.
The pope will fly back to Rome from Tenerife and is expected to speak with reporters on the plane. On July 4, he is scheduled to visit Lampedusa, the Italian island that has also become a major landing point for migrants, making the issue a defining focus of his papacy.
