Pope Leo XIV closes Spain trip with Canary Islands migrant plea: 'We are all migrants'

Final stop on a migration pilgrimage

Pope Leo XIV used the final day of his 6–12 June visit to Spain to speak directly to migrants on the Canary Island of Tenerife, one of Europe's busiest entry points for irregular arrivals. Speaking in French at a reception centre, he told several hundred people that 'we are all, in a certain way, migrants.' The pontiff then outlined what he called a 'reciprocal path' of integration, insisting that newcomers must learn the language, respect laws and customs of their host country, while receiving societies have a duty to help others feel like a living part of the community.

Integration is a reciprocal path.

The duty of hosts and the task of newcomers

The pope warned against the creation of 'parallel worlds closed to one another, where people live together without really meeting.' He urged migrants not to erase their own history but to embrace their new home's norms. At the same time, he reminded host societies of their obligations, framing integration as a shared effort to prevent a second shipwreck after the perilous Atlantic crossing.

To integrate is to prevent a second shipwreck.

A tribute to lives lost at sea

On Thursday, Leo XIV had visited the port of Arguineguín on neighbouring Gran Canaria, a site where more than 3,000 migrants were crammed together in degrading conditions during the Covid-19 pandemic. There he threw a bouquet of flowers into the ocean to honour the thousands who have died on the Atlantic route, a gesture that his predecessor Francis, who died a year ago, had been unable to make. He called on countries of origin to adopt policies that allow every person to live with dignity on their own land and addressed Europe directly, saying the continent cannot proclaim human dignity while accepting that the Mediterranean and the Atlantic become cemeteries without tombstones.

Human dignity does not have a passport and does not lose its value when it crosses a border.

A direct appeal to traffickers

Inside the Tenerife reception centre, Leo XIV raised his voice to address human traffickers, telling them to stop, to sustained applause from the audience. He declared that the fear, indifference and violence of those who trade in human life would never have the last word. A 16-year-old Gambian migrant, Aliu Ceesay, who arrived a month ago, said the pope was kind and did not care whether people were black or white, Muslim or Christian.

Migration by the numbers

The International Organization for Migration reports that 1,172 migrants died or disappeared on the Atlantic route to the Canaries in 2025. According to Spain's interior ministry, nearly 18,000 others reached the archipelago in makeshift boats last year, a sharp drop from the nearly 50,000 irregular entries recorded in 2024.

An archipelagic gateway

Throughout his six-day journey, the pope met with religious and secular associations that assist migrants and made the migration crisis the central theme of his Spanish visit. The Canary Islands, sitting off the African coast, remain a main gateway into Europe for irregular migrants, a reality that Leo XIV sought to place at the heart of his public appearances, culminating in an open-air Mass on the port of Santa Cruz later on Friday.