The death of Pope Francis has, perhaps inevitably, prompted recollections by many personalities in the Canaries of their contacts with the head of the Catholic church since his election over a decade ago.
Several senior political figures visited the Spanish-speaking Pope (who was originally from Argentina and lived in Spain as a student), including Spain’s current regional policy minister Angel Víctor Torres, who – as then president of the Islands – headed a delegation of representatives of CD Tenerife to Rome in 2022 for an audience with the football-mad Pope on the occasion of the Canarian club’s centenary and took advantage of the opportunity to present Francis with a team jersey. The mayor of Laguna, Yeray González, was also received by the Pope in April 2024 as president of Spain’s World Heritage Cities.
Current regional president Fernando Clavijo visited the pontiff on two occasions, most recently in January 2024 when he headed a Canarian government delegation which travelled to Rome to highlight the drama of the thousands of migrants who risk life and limb on the treacherous crossing from Africa to these shores. During his time in office, the Pope repeatedly voiced his concern for migrants and refugees and called on world governments to prioritise a solution to the multiple problems they face. Speaking on the eve of the pontiff’s funeral, Clavijo – who sent a personal letter of gratitude to him last September, along with a tote bag handmade by young migrants cared for here – said he was ‘eternally grateful’ to Pope Francis for his sensitivity to the plight of migrants in the Canaries.
It has now emerged that that same sensitivity was viewed as a potential problem in the eyes of the Spanish government, who are said to have discouraged a visit by Pope Francis to the Canaries (a promise he had made to Clavijo) given the possible ‘political weaponisation’ of such a high profile visit at a time when Spain is under fire for not taking steps to reduce the pressure on the Canaries of so many migrant arrivals. Attempts to secure an agreement to redistribute unaccompanied child migrants, mainly from sub-Saharan Africa and currently being cared for by the Canarian government at great cost in terms of resources, have repeatedly been blocked by other parts of the country who are reluctant to shoulder the burden and the issue has become a major political football.
Digital newspaper Artículo 14 reports this week that the Pope’s insistence that he would not visit bigger countries until he had been to as many smaller ones as possible irked Spanish premier Pedro Sánchez, who had pressed the Vatican to persuade the pontiff to visit Seville to coincide with a United Nations summit to be held there in late June. According to the reports, Pope Francis had expressed a strong preference to visit the Canaries on a stop-off on his way to his native Argentina and the prospect of such a trip had ruffled feathers in Spain.
