Pope Leo to migrant traffickers: “Stop. Repent.”

The encounter, in the Plaza del Cristo de La Laguna in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, was held just before a Mass that would be the final public event of a weeklong journey (June 6–12) under the motto “Lift up your eyes.” It followed a visit earlier that morning to the nearby Las Raíces reception centre. The Pope was welcomed by the local bishop, Eloy Alberto Santiago Santiago, and heard harrowing testimonies from a migrant priest and three migrants before he spoke.

The address’s sharpest passage was aimed at those who organize deadly crossings, traffic in people, seize documents, exploit workers, and turn the suffering of others into a business. “Stop. Repent,” the Pope told them, warning that money wrested from the vulnerability of the poor would bring neither peace, nor honor, nor a future, and that they would answer before divine justice. He called on them to free those they held in bondage and to return what they had taken while there was still time.

Leo framed the crisis around two wrecks: the deaths at sea he likened to underwater graveyards, and what he termed a “second shipwreck” after arrival — being left alone in a city without language, ties, work, or trust. Integration, he said, means preventing that second, silent wreck.

Distinguishing assistance from integration, the Pope offered a pointed formulation: “Welcome opens the door; integration helps one cross the threshold.” He described integration as a reciprocal journey that neither erases a newcomer’s history nor builds parallel worlds, asking migrants to learn the local language, respect its laws and contribute their gifts, while urging host societies to widen their homes without diluting their own identity.

Migrants, he insisted, are people made in God’s image, not legal categories or problems to be managed. He also asked Catholics not to reduce integration to social work alone, and to let themselves be evangelized by migrants from Latin America, the Philippines and elsewhere already woven into local life.

In his welcome, Bishop Santiago drew on La Laguna’s identity as a UNESCO-listed “open city” founded without walls in the late 15th century. He cited the Pope’s own exhortation on love for the poor, Dilexi Te, on a Church that builds bridges where others raise walls, and described diocesan work — Spanish classes and job training through Caritas and parish networks — aimed at shifting from a pastoral approach for migrants to one with them.

The testimonies gave the argument faces. Father Darwin Rivas, a Venezuelan priest who has served on El Hierro for seven years, described parishes on the front line of African arrivals at La Restinga and the volunteers, police and neighbours who, he said, are instruments for good. Mbacke, from Senegal, speaking for the El Buen Samaritano foundation, thanked those who did not look away and recalled being told “you are worth it, you can”; he warned that many young migrants face the street the day they turn 18.

Khalid Allad, 24, from Morocco, recounted a small-boat crossing he attempted twice — 20 people died on the first — before training with the Don Bosco foundation led to a job at a Salesian school, where he now goes to work happy each morning. Thalia Saldarriaga, 48, from Colombia, described losing her home before Caritas and the Church helped her rebuild; she now volunteers herself, a bridge for others in her situation.

Returning to the journey’s motto, Leo urged the crowd to lift their gaze to Christ without looking away from those who suffer, and invoked the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt as a model for every refugee. After the address he toured the square by golf cart, greeting the sick and members of religious communities, and later saluted local Catholics from the balcony of the bishop’s residence. He will celebrate Mass before departing Santa Cruz de Tenerife for Rome -- after a farewell ceremony presided over by Queen Sofía -- bringing both the day and his Spanish visit to a close.