{"id":131927,"date":"2026-06-05T03:44:42","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:44:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pope-leos-visiting-europes-migration-hot-spots-catholics-hope-hell-ease-political-tensions\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T03:44:42","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T09:44:42","slug":"pope-leos-visiting-europes-migration-hot-spots-catholics-hope-hell-ease-political-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/pope-leos-visiting-europes-migration-hot-spots-catholics-hope-hell-ease-political-tensions\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Leo’s visiting Europe’s migration hot spots. Catholics hope he’ll ease political tensions"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"FILE
FILE – Migrants react as they arrive at the port in La Restinga on the Canary island of El Hierro, Spain, on, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo\/Maria Ximena, File)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Maria Ximena, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV<\/a> is delving into the hotly contested issue of migration by visiting two flashpoints \u2014 Spain\u2019s Canary Islands<\/a> in the Atlantic next week, and Italy\u2019s Lampedusa island<\/a> in the Mediterranean in early July.<\/p>\n

These rocky, remote outposts of Europe have struggled with the arrival of tens of thousands of mostly African migrants through some of the world’s deadliest migration routes<\/a>. Even as numbers decreased this year, especially in the Canaries, the issue continues to roil politics in these historically Catholic countries.<\/p>\n

Many Catholics and migrants hope the upcoming papal trips will refocus attention on solidarity and support \u2014 and away from divisive political debate that is splitting the right in addition to pitting it against the left.<\/p>\n

\u201cStuck in the middle are the migrants,\u201d said the Most Rev. Jos\u00e9 Mazuelos, the bishop of Canarias, whose diocese includes several of the islands. \u201cSo the church says, \u2018Let\u2019s give them a face, because we\u2019re talking about people, not numbers.\u2019”<\/p>\n

Among them is Eslim Jallow, 27. Dreaming of a more prosperous future, Jallow and his younger brother left Gambia and landed in the Canary Islands in 2023. At first, Jallow struggled to adapt, but he quickly learned Spanish, took courses and now earns a living as a programmer and web developer in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.<\/p>\n

\u201cPerhaps the pope will change the way in which people here look at immigrants,\u201d Jallow said. \u201cImmigrants should be treated with dignity and respect, not ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like most migrants arriving in the islands, he isn\u2019t Catholic. But he feels that Leo \u201cspeaks for us, he reminds the world we are also human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Catholic Church\u2019s ministry to migrants<\/strong><\/p>\n

Advocating for migrants globally was a priority for Pope Francis. <\/a> He went to Lampedusa in 2013 on his first pastoral visit outside Rome and, three years later on the Greek island of Lesbos, he brought back with him<\/a> a dozen Syrian Muslim refugees.<\/p>\n

Under Leo, the Catholic Church has continued to call for their humane treatment around the world, including decrying mass deportations<\/a> in his home country, the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cPope Leo is signaling how important immigration is to him by doing these two trips early in his papacy,\u201d said Michele Pistone, a Villanova University professor who leads its new center on immigration.<\/p>\n

In the Canaries, Leo is expected at the port of Arguinegu\u00edn, on the island of Gran Canaria, on June 11 to pay homage to thousands of migrants who died or disappeared en route. The next day, he will meet migrants at a camp on the island of Tenerife.<\/p>\n

The archipelago has been the epicenter of a humanitarian crisis that in 2024 saw the arrival of nearly 47,000 migrants from North and West Africa, including several thousand unaccompanied<\/a> minors.<\/p>\n

Like Jallow, half of them landed in El Hierro island \u2014 nearly triple its population, said the Most Rev. Eloy Santiago, bishop of Tenerife, whose diocese includes that smaller island. Its resources were strained to a breaking point, even though most migrants only stayed a few days.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf a boat arrives, the couple of local doctors have to go out running to take care of them, and then the local residents who had their medical appointments can\u2019t have them,\u201d Santiago said.<\/p>\n

Catholic organizations are among those that aid migrants from the moment they step out of rickety, overcrowded boats.<\/p>\n

Arrivals have slowed dramatically this year, in part due to stricter controls along the African coast. But the most challenging task remains \u2014 how to help those who arrived as minors, were entrusted to state care, and are thrown out into the streets when they turn 18, often with no job prospects and no support.<\/p>\n

Caya Su\u00e1rez, secretary-general for the Catholic charity Caritas in the Canaries, has seen firsthand how migrants coming of age on the islands are the most vulnerable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a very bad moment, even though they\u2019d been waiting for it with hope, because they see they are still stuck without alternatives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Caritas tries to help the young adults find housing and jobs, she added. It\u2019s also relocated a few young migrants to Madrid, a small village in the largely rural region of Galicia, and elsewhere on the mainland, with the help of parishes there even as the governments of other Spanish regions have been reluctant to take on underage migrants.<\/p>\n

Spain\u2019s migrant amnesty and continuing challenges<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many residents in the Canaries feel like they\u2019ve been abandoned to cope with an unsolvable problem \u2014 how to stretch even farther resources for migrants who thought they\u2019d be within reach of economic prosperity and free to travel across the European Union, and instead end up on the street, struggling to send remittances home but also to leave.<\/p>\n

Compounded with the perception that national and European political institutions tend to see it as an exclusively \u201cisland problem,\u201d the situation is generating a growing malaise even among generous islanders who have long been accustomed to migration to and from Latin America, the Canaries\u2019 bishops said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pope\u2019s word can help so that in the middle of this fatigue, people can buck up again because they see they are supported,\u201d said Santiago, who was born and ordained a priest on the islands.<\/p>\n

At the national level, Spain\u2019s Catholic Church also backed a new measure<\/a> giving temporary residency permits to potentially more than half a million foreigners in the country illegally, many from Latin America.<\/p>\n

They often work in hospitality, agriculture and eldercare, boosting the economy, according to the socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez<\/a> \u2014 and to the church.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the matter of immigration, the church\u2019s position gets into a head-on collision with the position of the right,\u201d said Pablo Sim\u00f3n, a political science professor at University Carlos III in Madrid.<\/p>\n

That has created a rift between the church and far-right parties, like Vox in Spain, which has criticized the church on immigration, despite often couching its anti-migrant rhetoric in religious terms.<\/p>\n

Days before she is expected to meet Leo, Isabel D\u00edaz Ayuso, the firebrand Popular Party conservative regional leader of Madrid, described the migrant legalization push as \u201cimporting mass poverty.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rev. Fernando Redondo, who leads the migration department of the Spanish bishops\u2019 conference, said the church\u2019s stance is in line with the Christian mandate to welcome the stranger. But he added it needs better understanding among the many faithful who believe migrants come to steal jobs or live off welfare.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a big challenge, which is raising awareness among our faithful \u2026 that from the viewpoint of faith, to welcome a migrant person is to welcome Christ himself,\u201d Redondo said. \u201cThen, of course, there needs to be ways, proper social and political ways, so that migration doesn\u2019t become a total mess.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoping for words of reconciliation in the Canary Islands<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Canaries, ordinary people have been on the front lines of that often life-endangering chaos \u2014 fishermen who hand out drinking water to migrants on ramshackle rafts, sunbathers who run into the sea to help landing migrants, the volunteers who greet them in more than a dozen languages.<\/p>\n

But they have also seen that integration can work, as in a small mountain village that was emptying out until a center for three dozen migrant children was opened, creating jobs and filling up the school \u2014 and the local church\u2019s annual feast day procession.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why many look forward to Leo bringing a simple but crucial message of reconciliation that focuses on the people impacted, not on the politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe pope doesn\u2019t support this slogan of \u2018let\u2019s go, open doors for the whole world here.\u2019 Nobody supports that,\u201d Mazuelos said. \u201cWhen here comes a gentleman in a wooden boat after five days in the Atlantic, what are we supposed to do, kick him back? We\u2019ve got to find a way to welcome him.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Dell’Orto reported from Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP\u2019s collaboration<\/a> with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.<\/p>\n

\"FILE
FILE – Migrants crowd a wooden boat as they sail to the port in La Restinga on the Canary island of El Hierro, Spain, Sunday, Aug. 18, 2024. (AP Photo\/Maria Ximena, File)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Maria Ximena, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"FILE
FILE – Mamadou Patherazi, from Guinea, sits on a bench at the Modern Christian Mission church in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, Spain, on Aug. 22, 2020. (AP Photo\/Emilio Morenatti, File)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Emilio Morenatti, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"FILE
FILE – Migrants disembark at the port of "La Estaca" in Valverde on the Canary island of El Hierro, Spain, Aug. 26, 2024. Emergency services said the migrants arrived by boat after a 13-day voyage from Senegal. (AP Photo\/Maria Ximena, File)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Maria Ximena, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"FILE
FILE – A police officer speaks with migrants and asylum-seekers in Gran Canaria island, Spain, Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020. (AP Photo\/Emilio Morenatti, File)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Emilio Morenatti, File)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

– Migrants react as they arrive at the port in La Restinga on the Canary island of El Hierro, Spain, on, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo\/Maria Ximena, File)(AP Photo\/Maria Ximena, File) BARCELONA, Spain (AP) \u2014 Pope Leo XIV is delving into the hotly contested issue of migration by visiting two flashpoints \u2014 Spain\u2019s Canary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5734],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-131927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-associated-press"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131927"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=131927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}