Repent from your evil ways or prepare to go to hell. That was the simple message from Pope Leo on Friday for people traffickers and criminal groups who deliver illegal aliens to Europe through Spain’s Canary Islands.
Reuters reports 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 peoples’ desperation (or) organise death routes.”
“Stop. Repent,” the first U.S. pope declared. “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 eternal hell in death.
This is not the first time the Pope has addressed mass immigration or the career criminals driving it.
On Monday the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics called for a global response to the “tragic drama” of migration and said world peace was a “true global imperative.”
He called for “safe and legal pathways” for immigration and for migrants to be given “a respectful welcome and real opportunities for integration”.
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 journey through Atlantic waters on their way to the mainland and beyond.