SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Spain — Pope Leo XIV condemned human traffickers and called on them to repent during a historic visit to the Canary Islands, the first by any pope to the Spanish archipelago that has become a major entry point for migrants into Europe.
“To those who organize death routes, traffic in human beings, withhold documents, exploit workers, threaten women, deceive families and turn the suffering of others into a business,” the pope said during a meeting with migrants and aid workers. “Stop” and “Repent while there is still time.”
“For every life lost, every family deceived, every body subjugated, every woman threatened, every worker exploited, you will have to appear before divine justice,” he proclaimed. “The money wrested from the vulnerability of the poor will bring neither peace, nor honor, nor a future.”
The visit concluded the pope’s June 6-12 apostolic journey to Spain, which included stops in Madrid and Barcelona. More than 3,000 people died or disappeared in 2025 while trying to reach the Canary Islands, according to the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras. More than 10,000 people drowned along the route in 2024, the organization reported.
At the port of Arguineguín on Gran Canaria, Pope Leo stood with two young African men and tossed a floral bouquet into the Atlantic to honor the dead. He blessed a wooden cross fashioned from the wreckage of capsized migrant boats. “The successor of Peter cannot ignore these docks,” he said. “The Church cannot ignore these waters or any place where hunger, thirst, violence, fear or exile continue to wound human dignity.”
The pope visited a temporary shelter for those rescued at sea and met survivors building new lives with help from island residents. Mbacke, a migrant from Senegal, addressed the pope directly: “Holy Father, I ask you keep reminding the world that behind every young migrant there is a dream, a mother who is praying and a life that is worthy of a chance.” An unnamed woman at a nearby shelter told the pope, “Our humanity must be held in higher regard than any legal status.”
The visit came as Spain recently launched a mass regularization program aimed at legalizing the status of some 500,000 undocumented migrants, while many European Union member states have enacted increasingly restrictive asylum rules, according to Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office. Pope Leo called for “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.”
Tito Villarmea, a ship captain working with the public rescue network Salvamento Marítimo, told the pope that the Canary Islands are beautiful by day, “but at night it’s a different story: rough seas, total darkness and fragile boats loaded with human lives.”
The U.S.-born pope, a grandson and great-grandson of immigrants, was fulfilling a desire of his predecessor Pope Francis to visit the Canary Islands. Pope Leo is scheduled to visit Lampedusa, another major Mediterranean migration flashpoint, on July 4.