Pope Leo XIV Ends Spain Visit With Migrant Meetings

Pope Leo XIV will meet migrants and hold an open-air mass on the island of Tenerife on Friday to end a visit to Spain that has highlighted the plight of irregular arrivals. 

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.