Pope Leo Calls Migrant Crisis "A Call to Conscience" for All Nations

Meeting migrants on Gran Canaria, Pope Leo has urged that their “plight” become “a call to conscience” for all nations and for the Catholic Church.

Pope Leo XIV meets with Immigrant Organizations at Arguineguin in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, Thursday, June 11, 2026.

“The Church cannot ignore these waters, nor any place where hunger, thirst, violence, fear, or exile continue to wound human dignity,” said Leo today. His address came as part of an encounter between the Pope, migrants and migrant charities, held at the port of Arguineguín, in Gran Canaria.

“What kind of world have we built, if so many brothers and sisters must risk death in search of life?,” Leo asked.

Spain’s Canary Islands has become one of the main exit points for migrants coming from Africa and entry points to Europe. The Port of Arguineguín was dubbed the Port of Shame when in 2020 a huge influx of immigrants were met with inadequate facilities and shortages of food, water and clothing.

“May history not accuse us of having turned the pain of those who suffer into a familiar sight along our shores,” said the Pope. “Because today, here, by the sea, every life that arrives asks us what remains of our humanity.”

After listening to testimonies from migrants and charities assisting them, Leo delivered his own speech, aimed at giving support to migrants, while also urging greater international attention to the question.

He decried also the business of human trafficking and “exploitation,” saying that “even if others have placed a price on your body, God has never ceased to see you as a person of inestimable value.”

Instead, Leo urged a Catholic response to a transactional view of human life: “Your life belongs to God and retains a dignity that no one can take from you. And we want to walk with you, until that truth is heard once more, louder than the pain.”

“Before saying anything else, I want to bow before your dignity,” he told the migrants gathered at the port to hear him. “You are not numbers, nor are you files! You are people with a family and a home you left behind, with dreams that no one has the right to despise.”

Leo also issued a warning to them not to fall into the pitfalls of opening themselves up to human trafficking, and urged against believing “those who promise easy paradises in exchange for your bodies, your money, your silence, or your freedom.” Such “siren songs” are in fact the “industries of death,” commented Leo.

The port of Arguineguín was a location that Pope Francis wished to visit, and would have been a pinnacle of his papal focus on immigration during his 12-year reign. By visiting instead, Leo was thus in many ways fulfilling the vision of his predecessor as he has done in other aspects of his foreign travels. His attention to immigration also echoes that of Francis, as does some of his rhetoric.

But Leo also presented a more nuanced response to immigration than Francis was known for. While voicing support for migrants, he also urged that their home nations must take responsibility of ensuring there is no need for such a journey:

“Your plight must become a call to conscience: for your countries of origin, which must create conditions of peace, justice, and development; for transit nations, called to protect and not leave the vulnerable in the hands of criminal networks; for Europe, which cannot proclaim human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic being graveyards without headstones; for the international community, called to effective and persevering cooperation.”

Posited in concern even just for human dignity, Leo urged increased activity to address the various issues relating to immigration: “legal and safe routes, rescue and assistance, genuine 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.”

There exists, he said, a right not to have to migrate: the right to remain in one’s own home without hunger, without war, without persecution, without violence, without the land becoming uninhabitable, without corruption stealing bread from the poor, without weapons destroying children’s futures.”

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The American pontiff also pointed a finger at the Church to also be “challenged” by the topic of migration. “Welcoming migrants cannot be a secondary concern, nor can it be delegated solely to a few volunteers,” he said. “We kneel before the altar to adore Christ present in the Eucharist, from whom we receive the strength and motivation to live out charity: for this reason, we cannot simply ‘pass by’ the cayucas and pateras, since every act of service springs from prayer and every commitment returns to it.”

Immigration figures for the Canary Islands have fallen since the peak of nearly 47,000 people who arrived in 2024. A total of around 17,800 were recorded as arriving by sea to the Islands in 2025. Nevertheless Gran Canaria remains a highly active port of entry for many African migrants, and given the current debate and attention over immigration in Europe, Leo’s visit to the port is a moment in which the Pope directly involves himself in a key political talking point.

Unchecked immigration into much of Europe has indeed led to a severe increase in violent attacks on locals, including just this week when a Sudanese asylum seeker – who was granted speedy entry into the U.K. in 2023 – attempted to behead a man in Northern Ireland.

The Holy See’s repeated interventions on immigration always appear blind to the fact that immigration channels are regularly abused not just by traffickers – which Leo did address – but by the admission of fighting age males with no apparent desire or intent of assimilating into the culture, and who are repeatedly the cause of unrest.

Responding to similar such issues and the deleterious effect of unchecked immigration – often political rather than humanitarian migration – a new initiative called the Save Europe Act was recently launched. Revealed at a Remigration Summit in Porto by key remigration activists – including Catholic, Dutch commentator Eva Vlaardingerbroek – the Act calls for an instant end to all non-Western migration into Europe.

The Act has already amassed over 300,000 signatures within two weeks, and seeks one million names in order to “force Brussels to take action.”

For his part, Leo has weighed into the immigration debate with an attempt to highlight human dignity, respect for one’s fellow man, and urging an end to wars, persecution and other circumstances which force immigration.

Lamentably he appears blind to the reality of the dangers of such channels of travel being used to funnel large swathes of men who have no need of safe immigration and appear aimed at disrupting the countries they enter.