Pope Leo XIV warned people smugglers on Friday that they will face God’s wrath for exploiting the desperation of migrants, demanding they stop and repent during his final day in the epicenter of the African migration route to Europe. For the second day in a row in the Canary Islands, the American pope insisted on the inherent dignity and rights of migrants and demanded they be welcomed and integrated into society, in some of his strongest comments on the politically divisive issue, the AP reports.
“Break those chains and free those you hold in bondage,” Leo said during a meeting with humanitarian aid organizations that help migrants on the island of Tenerife. He directed his remarks to the criminal organizations and individual smugglers who organize dangerous “death routes” to Europe. Such smugglers charge thousands of dollars a person and often force their passengers into prostitution or other forms of black market labor by withholding their documents to pay off the debt.
“Stop. Repent,” Leo said in his message to traffickers, emphasizing each word in Spanish and drawing sustained applause from the crowd. “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 added: “Repent while there is still time, for God’s mercy can reach even the most hardened sinner, but it enters only through the narrow gate of truth, justice, and conversion.” During the encounter with aid groups in Tenerife, Leo implored communities to integrate people fleeing war, poverty, and climate change and spare them from the “silent shipwreck” of abandonment when they are left on the streets with nothing after surviving perilous crossings. “A human conscience, and even more so a Christian conscience, cannot remain indifferent in the face of these graveyards of the sea, to the victims of shipwrecks and the lack of aid,” Leo said. “Every life lost on these routes is a failure for the human family.”
Leo wrapped up his weeklong trip to Spain in the Spanish archipelago, which is closer to Africa than the Iberian Peninsula and is a key point of entry for migrants who make the perilous Atlantic crossing from West Africa. He is fulfilling a wish of Pope Francis to visit the islands to commemorate the thousands of lives lost at sea. He is also drawing attention to the Catholic Church’s biblically-mandated mantra to “welcome the stranger,” amid anti-migrant sentiment in Europe and the Trump administration’s mass deportation program in his native United States.
The pontiff had a travel hiccup at the end of his visit. Leo’s Iberia charter, due to take him back to Rome after the weeklong visit to Spain, was grounded by a technical problem, prompting Spain’s king to offer his private jet instead. King Felipe VI escorted Leo to his Falcon on the tarmac at the airport in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the AP reports. Leo and members of his delegation boarded the plane and took off, more than three hours after he was originally due to leave. It was the first time in decades that a papal flight had experienced a problem so serious that it required the pope to change planes.