By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
ARGUINEGUIN, Spain — Standing at the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, where thousands of migrants arrive each year after dangerous journeys from Africa, Pope Leo XIV recalled the biblical sea monsters Leviathan and Rahab.
Yet the greatest threats lurking in these waters, he said, are not creatures of Scripture.
“Monsters lurk in these seas: mafias that profit from despair, traffickers who enslave women and children, and those whose indifference allows the poor to be swallowed up by exploitation or forgetfulness,” he said June 11 in the Canary Islands.
In his first stop of the final leg of his apostolic journey to Spain, Pope Leo delivered an impassioned speech on migration.
Those “monsters” are real as more than 3,000 people died or disappeared while trying to reach the Canary Islands in 2025, according to the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras. More than 10,000 people were recorded to have drowned along this dangerous migration route in 2024, it added.
Pope Leo appealed to the nations of origin of the migrants, saying they must establish conditions for peace, justice and development and he appealed to transit nations to protect people from criminal networks.
“It is likewise an appeal to the conscience of Europe, which cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves, as well as that of the international community, which is called to effective and persevering cooperation,” he said.
Becoming the first pope in history to visit this autonomous community of Spain, Pope Leo was also fulfilling his predecessor’s desire to visit the migrants arriving to these shores and the people who rescue them and offer them assistance.
According to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, Ousseynou Fall and other migrants who have made a new life on Gran Canaria had written to Pope Francis in 2024, inviting him to the volcanic archipelago off the coast of Morocco that had welcomed them.
It would have been the Argentine pope’s fourth trip to a migrant entry point into Europe after Lampedusa in 2013 and Lesbos in 2016 and 2021 to draw attention to the consequences of unscrupulous traffickers taking advantage of people searching for a better future and the international community’s lack of cooperation and initiative in regulating immigration and safeguarding its seas. Pope Leo will go to Lampedusa July 4.
The U.S. pope, who is a grandson and great-grandson of immigrants, accepted Fall’s invitation, the newspaper said June 5, making it be the last leg after visiting Madrid June 6-9 and Barcelona June 9-11.
“Here, people are rescued from the sea and lifeless bodies are recovered from the waters,” Pope Leo said to those gathered at the port, including dozens of rescuers, ranging from simple fishermen to government maritime patrols.
“The successor of Peter cannot ignore these docks,” he said June 11. “The church cannot ignore these waters or any place where hunger, thirst, violence, fear or exile continue to wound human dignity. Jesus’ disciples cannot dismiss the cries of those who call out in the night.”
With two young men from Africa by his side, the pope tossed a floral bouquet in the blue water to honor and pray for the dead.
The pope also prayed before a statue of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, patroness of sailors, and he blessed a wooden cross fashioned from the wreckage of boats capsized and destroyed on their voyage.
The visit comes as Spain recently launched a mass regularization program aimed at legalizing the status of some 500,000 undocumented migrants. Meanwhile, many European Union member states have been enacting increasingly restrictive and punitive asylum rules, according to Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office; and holding centers can be slow to process and unable to properly care for massive influxes of migrants.
“Human dignity demands 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,” the pope said.
A rescuer, a charity worker and an immigrant turned entrepreneur told the pope their stories of perseverance despite many obstacles in their way.
Pope Leo said he wanted the voices of the men and women who had spoken at the port to reach everyone, especially those in government and international organizations, and people of faith and good will.
“We cannot grow accustomed to counting the dead,” he said. “Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border.”
In his forceful plea for migrants and refugees, the pope posed the question of what kind of world society has created “if so many brothers and sisters must risk death to seek life?”
Following his visit to the port, the pope met with the diocese’s Catholic community at its cathedral and a Mass in the island’s stadium.
Above: Pope Leo XIV made a floral offering to migrants lost at sea June 11 at the dock of the Port of Arguineguin in the Canary Islands. He was the first pontiff to visit the autonomous community in Spain (Yara Nardi / Reuters / OSV News)