The constant flow of people embarking in small, rickety boats to migrate abroad should force a reckoning as to why we have built a world where so many “must risk death to seek life”, Pope Leo has said as he warned: “We cannot grow accustomed to counting the dead.”
Thursday’s speech in the Canary Islands, on the final leg of the pontiff’s week-long tour of Spain, contained Leo’s most pointed comments to date on migration.
Standing near a memorial to the many who had braved the fierce swells of the Atlantic in the hope of carving out a better life in Europe, the pope railed against the world’s “indifference” and called on leaders to treat migrants more humanely.
“Even today, monsters lurk in these seas: mafias that traffic in despair, traffickers who enslave women and children, and those whose indifference allows the poor to be swallowed up by exploitation or oblivion,” he said.
Last year, an estimated 1,906 people died attempting to cross into Europe along the perilous Atlantic route. » | Ashifa Kassam | European community affairs correspondent | Thursday, June 11, 2026
