San Francisco Frontiers - Pope ends Spain visit with migrant meetings

The leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics is concluding his trip with a call for more help for migrants and action against traffickers as immigration remains a hot topic of political debate.

Tenerife is one of the Canary Islands in the Atlantic, which have become a gateway for tens of thousands of irregular arrivals seeking a better life in Europe.

The pope is set to speak to hundreds of migrants at Las Raices (The Roots), a centre housed in a former military barracks that was initially heavily criticised for overcrowding.

He is then expected to celebrate an open-air mass in the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in front of tens of thousands of people.

After visiting Madrid and Barcelona earlier in the week, the pope arrived in another island of the archipelago, Gran Canaria, on Thursday.

He condemned "indifference" towards migrants and cast a wreath into the sea at the port of Arguineguin to honour the thousands who have died trying to reach the Canaries.

"Human dignity has no passport," he said on the dockside before blessing a faded blue cross made of wood from a boat that migrants arrived on.

"Monsters lurk in these seas... traffickers who enslave women and children, and those whose indifference allows the poor to be swallowed up by exploitation or forgetfulness," he said.

- 'Critical moment' -

Nearly 1,200 people died or went missing on the route from Africa to the Canary Islands last year, according to the International Organization for Migration, making it one of the world's deadliest migration routes.

Europe, where governments have toughened their policies under pressure from the far right, "cannot claim to uphold human dignity while growing accustomed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic becoming unmarked graves", he said.

The pope said the tragedy must "appeal to the conscience" of nations of origin and transit where migrants flee poverty and conflict and fall prey to trafficking gangs.

"We really value this visit. It's very important for us at such a critical moment," Mohamed Amjahdi, who arrived in the islands from Morocco on a boat when he was 17, told AFP in Arguineguin.

From Tenerife, the pope will fly to Rome and is expected to speak to reporters on the plane.

U.Campbell--SFF