MADRID: Pope Leo has issued a stern warning to human traffickers and criminal groups who exploit desperate migrants trying to reach Europe through Spain’s Canary Islands, telling them to “repent” before God or face being sent to hell.
On the final day of a week-long tour of Spain, in which the pontiff has urged global leaders to treat migrants more humanely, Leo said he wanted to directly address those who “take advantage of people’s desperation (or) organize death routes.”
“Stop. Repent,” said the first US pope. “For every life lost, every family deceived ... you will have to appear before divine justice.”
“Repent while there is still time,” he said, invoking the Catholic belief that someone who did evil in life must confess their sins and make amends or be sent to hell in death.
Leo, who has been more outspoken in his criticism of the direction of global leadership in recent months, is visiting the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago off the western coast of Africa, as the culmination of his three-stop tour of Spain.
The islands are one of the main gateways into Europe for migrants, who risk taking a deadly journey through Atlantic waters, often in improvised and overcrowded small craft.
On Thursday, his first of two days on the islands, the pope warned world leaders that history would condemn those who allowed people fleeing war or poverty to suffer.
In a meeting with charities helping migrants on Friday, Leo said the “tears and blood” of migrants who were exploited trying to reach Europe “cry out to God.”
He was speaking on the day the EU’s Migration Pact, which tightens asylum rules, comes fully into force.
Located more than 1,000 km from mainland Spain, the Canaries saw a peak in migration in 2024, when the islands received 46,843 irregular migrants, compared with fewer than 1,000 in 2015, according to official data.
More than 3,000 people died in 2025 trying to reach the islands, according to the NGO Caminando Fronteras.
Migrant smugglers and human traffickers are becoming more agile in their exploitation of geopolitical instability and economic pressures, evolving their business models to incorporate online tools for recruitment and exploitation, Europol said in a 2025 report.
This year, police broke up a criminal network from Nigeria trafficking people in Spain and another exploiting vulnerable Ukrainian women who had been granted protection status in Spain, Europol said.
Last year, Spanish authorities broke up a human trafficking ring that lured more than 1,000 women to the country with false job offers before forcing them into sex work.
Pope Leo, who began his tour in Madrid, was the first pope to address the Spanish parliament, where he warned that escalating conflicts were pushing the world into a profound crisis.
He also visited Barcelona, where he inaugurated the newest of the Sagrada Familia’s soaring geometric spires, now the world’s tallest church.
Crowds during Leo’s visit have been large. More than 1.2 million thronged one of Madrid’s main squares in intense heat to see the pontiff on Sunday, in the largest event yet of his year-long papacy.
Spending Friday on Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, the pope also heard testimonies from several migrants during a visit to an interim housing center that has received some 70,000 migrants since it opened in 2021.
One woman, Bousso Diouf, told the pontiff that migrants did not want special privileges but “respect, humanity and the opportunity to live with dignity.”
In contrast to most of Europe, Spain has adopted a more open stance on migrants, introducing a program to grant residency to more than half a million undocumented people.
The initiative, however, has drawn criticism from far-right leaders, and the country is struggling with the slow pace of granting legal status to thousands in limbo.
