Pope's message to traffickers: Divine justice awaits you. After a plane malfunction, the king drove him home from Tenerife

Pope Leo XIV spent the last day of his seven-day trip to Spain on Tenerife — one of the main hubs of the African migration route to Europe — and devoted to it the toughest words of the entire visit. To the traffickers who profit from people's desperation, he said they would one day answer "before God's justice." But the day also brought an unexpected twist: the Iberia charter plane that was to fly him back to Rome was grounded by a technical fault, and he was ultimately flown home by King Felipe VI aboard a Spanish Air Force aircraft.

The toughest words of the entire trip

At Plaza del Cristo in the town of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, the pope met with humanitarian organizations that help migrants. It was there that he delivered his message to the traffickers: "Stop. Repent," he stressed, word by word, in Spanish, and the crowd applauded him for a long time. "For every life lost, every family deceived, every body enslaved, every woman endangered, and every worker exploited, you will have to answer before God's justice." PBS/AP ↗

He urged them to "break those chains and free those you hold captive," adding that God's mercy can reach even the most hardened sinner, but "only through the narrow gate of truth, justice, and conversion." Angelus ↗

The pier of shame, and faces instead of numbers

The day before, on Thursday, the pope threw a bouquet of flowers into the sea from the port of Arguineguín on Gran Canaria — the port that Spain nicknamed the "pier of shame" in 2020, when thousands of people slept there in the open. On Tenerife, he then visited the Las Raíces migrant camp in the morning and addressed its residents in French and English, languages spoken by many of those present. PBS/AP ↗

The migrants themselves were also given the floor. "We are not asking for privileges. We are not asking for pity. We just want respect, humanity, and a chance to live with dignity," said Bousso Diouf. After one of the testimonies, the seventy-year-old pope made the crowd laugh with the youthful "6-7" gesture popular among teenagers — a small detail showing that he is shaping the office in his own way.

The numbers speak clearly: while nearly 47,000 people arrived in the Canary Islands in 2024, in the first five months of 2026 the figure was just over three thousand. According to some experts, the Atlantic route from Africa is deadlier than the central Mediterranean route from Libya and Tunisia to Italy — since 2020, boats carrying only dead bodies have been found in the Caribbean and elsewhere in Latin America, having been swept across the ocean by trade winds.

Plane grounded, home with the king

The conclusion brought an unexpected drama of its own. Aboard the Iberia charter that was to fly the pope from Tenerife Norte airport back to Rome, the captain announced a technical malfunction — the aircraft could not take off, and Leo XIV and part of his entourage had to disembark. CNN ↗

King Felipe VI offered a solution: his own government Falcon 900B belonging to the Spanish Air Force. The pope accepted the offer, and the Spanish press published images of the two of them laughing as they walked down the stairs. The fault could not be fixed, so Iberia sent a second plane from Madrid for the journalists and Vatican officials who remained on Tenerife. According to the AP news agency, this was the first time in decades that a papal flight suffered a malfunction serious enough to require disembarking and changing plans. PBS/AP ↗

What the trip meant

The week in Spain had a clear arc: a historic speech to the Spanish parliament in Madrid that drew seven minutes of applause, a blessing of Gaudí's Sagrada Família tower in Barcelona, and finally the Canary Islands with the migrants. In doing so, the first American pope extended the legacy of his predecessor Francis — and, according to the AP, indirectly waded into two political debates that resonate both at home and abroad: anti-immigration sentiment in Europe and the Trump administration's deportation program back in his native United States.

The strength and the limit of his message lie in its indirectness. From the podium, he named neither Trump nor Spain's far-right Vox party, and his gestures — the bouquet in the sea, embracing migrants — are above all symbolic: they do not change European or Spanish policy on returns and borders.

Read also: Leo XIV condemned the war in Barcelona and is flying to migrants at the pier of shame

What hotinfo is following

• July 4 — Lampedusa: on the American Independence Day, the pope is expected to head to the Italian island where Francis condemned the "globalization of indifference" in 2013 — the question is whether he will sharpen the migration message even further.
• Washington's reaction: whether Trump or Vice President Vance will respond to the pope's calls against war and for migrants.
• Canary Islands: overwhelmed by thousands of unaccompanied minor migrants, they are asking Madrid for help — the question is whether the visit will move the Spanish debate on their relocation.