In a meeting today in the Canary Islands, a Spanish province off the coast of Africa, with migrants and people who aid migrants, Pope Leo XIV called for humanity to face up to its moral responsibility to create a world in which all people, in all nations, can live, work, raise their families and fulfill their dreams in safety. Asserting that there is a “right not to have to migrate,” he asked the fundamental question which begs the urgency of establishing a new international security and development architecture: “What kind of world have we built, if so many brothers and sisters must risk death to seek life?”
The meeting took place on the docks of the Arguineguín port on the island of Gran Canaria, known today as the “Port of Shame”, because some 2,600 Africans who arrived on rickety wooden boats in a few days during the 2020 COVID pandemic were left to live in the open, packed onto the port’s concrete pier, for three months. Before the Pope spoke, testimony had been given by four migrants and aid workers, including a Maritime Rescue captain who has helped save more than 20,000 people from drowning at sea, so far.
The Pope responded:
“From this island, I hope that the voices of those who have spoken today will reach those who hold positions of decisive responsibility—civil authorities, parliaments, governments, and international organizations—as well as Christian communities, other religious traditions, and all men and women of good will. It is not enough to manage arrivals, distribute numbers, reinforce borders, or lament deaths after they have already occurred.
“Every boat that arrives does not bring only migrants; it brings with it a question: What kind of world have we built, if so many of our brothers and sisters must risk death in search of life?
“While there is a right to seek refuge when one’s life is threatened, there is also 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 the bread from the poor, without weapons destroying children’s futures.
“We cannot grow accustomed to counting the dead. Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border.”
In the course of his remarks, the Pope addressed the migrants directly, bowing his head, “to your dignity,” he said. “You are not just numbers or files. You are people who have left behind families and homes. You have dreams that no one has the right to despise.”
So he appealed “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.”
