People traffickers will face wrath of God, warns Pope Leo

Pope Leo XIV warned people smugglers on Friday that they will face God’s wrath for exploiting the desperation of migrants, demanding they stop and repent during the final day of his trip to Spain.

“Break those chains and free those you hold in bondage,” Leo said in a message to human traffickers during a meeting with humanitarian aid organisations in the Canary Islands that help migrants.

Leo wrapped up his week-long trip in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago closer to Africa than the Iberian peninsula, and a key point of entry for migrants who make the perilous Atlantic crossing from West Africa.

He is fulfilling a wish of Pope Francis to visit the islands to commemorate the thousands of lives lost at sea.

He is also drawing attention to the Catholic Church’s biblically-mandated mantra to “welcome the stranger” amid anti-migrant sentiment in Europe and the Trump administration’s mass deportation programme in his native United States.

During an encounter with aid groups in Tenerife, Leo implored receiving communities to integrate people fleeing war, poverty and climate change and spare them from the “silent shipwreck” of abandonment when they are left on the streets with nothing after surviving perilous crossings.

“A human conscience, and even more so a Christian conscience, cannot remain indifferent in the face of these graveyards of the sea, to the victims of shipwrecks and the lack of aid,” Leo said.

“Every life lost on these routes is a failure for the human family.”