Pope Leo calls for “human dignity and humanity” in relation to migration during Canary Islands visit

Pope Leo XIV yesterday commenced the first ever papal visit to the Canary Islands with a hard-hitting speech about migration.

At the port of Arguineguin in Gran Canaria, Pope Leo listened to the testimony of a Nigerian trafficking victim, a Latin-American migrant, a Caritas volunteer and a Spanish Maritime Rescue captain, before beginning his address.

Pope Leo urged governments to create “legal and safe pathways, rescue and assistance, real cooperation against traffickers, effective protection for victims, serious processes of reception and integration, and policies that allow every person to live with dignity in their own land.”

“Each boat that arrives not only brings migrants; it brings a question: what kind of world have we built, if so many brothers must risk death to seek life?”.

Pope Leo had harsh words for Europe, saying “it cannot proclaim human dignity and become accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic being cemeteries without tombstones.”

Leo also attacked the causes of migration, saying “While there is a right to seek refuge when life is threatened, there is also a right not to have to migrate: the right to remain in one’s own home without hunger, war, persecution, violence, the earth becoming uninhabitable, corruption stealing the bread of the poor or weapons destroying the future of children”. 

He ended with a warning: “Here, by the sea, every life that arrives asks us what remains of our humanity. Sooner or later, it will be known whether we knew how to protect it, or if we let indifference speak for us.”