The pope traveled to the port of Arguineguin on Gran Canaria, where more than 2,000 migrants from Africa were held for weeks in 2020 in conditions that were widely criticized as degrading.
"Here arrive many whose lives have been wounded, stripped of almost everything, but never of their dignity", Leo XIV said. He said the Gospel "tears us from the comfortable life of a spectator" and asks "whether we have been able to recognize Christ in those who come ashore marked by fear, hunger and violence, after the desert, the night and the sea".
"We cannot get used to counting the dead", Leo XIV said, adding that "human dignity has no passport, nor does it lose its value when it crosses borders".
The pope said the island, "small in size but great in humanity", has seen thousands of people "torn from their land and entrusted to a small boat", with some rescued at sea and others recovered as bodies from the water. The Church, he said, "cannot ignore these waters, nor any place where hunger, thirst, violence, fear and exile continue to wound human dignity".
Describing the "monsters" he said roam the sea, the pope said: "These are mafias that trade in desperation, traffickers who turn women and children into slaves, and the indifference of many that allows the poor to be swallowed up by exploitation and forgetting".
Referring to aid provided by the Catholic relief agency Caritas, he said: "When a migrant stops being one among many, they also stop being a category and a number". He thanked those involved in rescue operations and in welcoming migrants, saying: "We feel the drama of many people forced to set out because poverty, war, threats or exploitation have closed every other path before them".
Addressing women who have been victims of trafficking, Leo XIV said: "If others have set a price on your body, God has never stopped looking at you as a priceless person ... Your life belongs to God and retains a dignity that no one can tear from you".
Turning to migrants directly, the pope said: "I want to bow before your dignity. You are not numbers or case files". He urged them not to trust traffickers' promises, saying: "Do not believe those who promise an easy paradise in exchange for your body, your money, your silence and your freedom" — calling such promises an "industry of death".
The pope said the migration crisis should prompt a conscience check for countries that migrants leave, which he said should ensure peace, justice and development; for transit countries, which must protect migrants from "criminal networks"; and for Europe, which he said "cannot proclaim human dignity while growing accustomed to the idea that the Mediterranean and the Atlantic will be cemeteries without headstones".
He called for "legal and safe routes" for migration and greater cooperation against traffickers, while also stressing what he called "a right not to emigrate" — the right to remain home without hunger, war or persecution.
(jh)
Source: PAP