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ARGUINEGUIN: Pope Leo appealed to world leaders on Thursday to treat migrants more humanely, warning in a visit to Spain’s Canary Islands, one of Europe’s migration hotspots, that history would condemn those who allowed people fleeing war or poverty to suffer.
In what he called an “appeal to the conscience” of politicians in Europe and the international community, the first US pope said that “human dignity has no passport and does not lose its value when crossing a border.”
“We cannot grow accustomed to counting the dead,” said the pope at Gran Canaria’s Port of Arguineguin, dubbed the “Dock of Shame” by relief organisations after some 1,000 migrants were stranded in squalid conditions there in the early months of the coronavirus pandemic.
“May history not accuse us of turning the pain of those who suffer into a common sight along our shores,” he urged thousands gathered near a memorial to migrants lost at sea. “Sooner or later, it will be known whether we protected life or whether we yielded to indifference.”
