ARGUINEGUÍN, Spain (OSV News) — Pope Leo delivered a powerful message to human trafficking survivors June 11 during the first stop of a two-day visit to Spain’s Canary Islands, one of Europe’s closest points of entry from the African coast.
“Your life does not belong to those who harmed you; your body does not belong to those who took advantage of you; your days do not belong to those who wanted to chain you to fear. Your life belongs to God, who has given you a dignity that cannot be taken from you,” the pope said at the Port of Arguineguín on the southern coast of the island of Gran Canaria.
Speaking directly to human trafficking victims, the pope said, “If others have put a price on your body, know that God has never ceased to recognize your inestimable worth. If others want to trap you in a painful past, God continues to make a promise for your future.”
A moving testimony from a Nigerian trafficking survivor
The pope spoke these words in response to a testimony from a Nigerian woman identified only as Blessing, who for security reasons did not appear in person. Her account described being trafficked from Africa to Europe by a mafia-organized crime group, who told her she owed an equivalent of $28,000 upon arrival.
“That’s how my captivity began,” she wrote in her testimony, which was read aloud for the pope.
“I waited six months to be able to leave. Six months with barely any food, unable to bathe for weeks, living in conditions I wouldn’t wish on anyone. And when the time came to cross the sea, I saw how the people who left before us that same day drowned.”
The woman who read the testimony aloud was moved to tears as she read Blessing’s account of how she became pregnant by one of her traffickers, who took her baby away from her and forced her into prostitution. Her son was finally returned to her when he was 11 months old and when Spanish police arrested her captors.
Blessing’s story was one of many shared with the pope upon his arrival in the Canary Islands. Pope Leo also heard from a Latin American migrant, a Caritas volunteer and a captain with Salvamento Marítimo, the Spanish state agency responsible for maritime rescue operations.
The Canary Islands are a Spanish archipelago of seven major volcanic islands situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwestern coast of Africa. Gran Canaria is roughly 93 miles from the Moroccan coast.
Pope Leo: Human dignity has no passport
The pope met with local organizations working with migrants in the Port of Arguineguín, which was once called the “dock of shame” due to the terrible conditions migrants were forced to live in when arrivals spiked at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and when some people were forced to sleep on the docks.
“Dear migrants, before saying anything else to you, I want to bow before your dignity. You are not just numbers or files,” Pope Leo said, slightly bowing his head as he spoke.
“I also want to tell you that your lives must be protected,” he added. “Do not surrender your lives to those who trade with them.”
Pope Leo urged governments to create “legal and safe pathways, rescue and assistance, real cooperation against traffickers, effective protection for victims, serious processes of reception and integration, and policies that allow every person to live with dignity in their own land.”
The pope also insisted on what he called the right not to migrate, “the right to remain in one’s own home without hunger, war, persecution, violence, the land becoming uninhabitable, corruption stealing the bread from the poor or weapons destroying the future of children.”
“Human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border,” Pope Leo said.
‘The Successor of Peter cannot ignore these docks’
Pope Leo urged the Catholic Church to take an active role in responding to the migration crisis, saying that the Gospel “pulls us out of our comfortable position as spectators and places before us a brother or a sister who has arrived.”
“It asks us if we have recognized Christ in those who disembark, marked by fear, hunger and violence, after enduring the desert, the night and the sea,” he said.
After the event, Pope Leo tossed a floral bouquet into the sea and prayed as it floated on the water in memory of migrants who have died at sea.
“The Successor of Peter cannot ignore these docks,” he said. “The Church cannot ignore these waters or any place where hunger, thirst, violence, fear or exile continue to wound human dignity.”
The pope then blessed a cross made from the wood of a migrant vessel, before proceeding by popemobile to the Cathedral of Santa Ana for a meeting with local bishops, priests, women religious, seminarians, and pastoral workers on the island before celebrating a stadium Mass in the evening.
Pope Leo’s two days in the Canary Islands
The papal plane, a chartered Iberia aircraft, arrived in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria after a more than three-hour flight from Barcelona, covering approximately 1,350 miles over Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
On June 12, Pope Leo is scheduled to travel to Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands, where he will visit a migrant reception facility and celebrate Mass at the Port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife on the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus before flying approximately 1,887 miles back to Rome.
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Courtney Mares is Vatican editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.
