The Pope's upcoming visit to the Canary Islands cannot be understood as a mass entertainment event. Those who try to reduce it to a kind of "big concert" demonstrate a worrying lack of perspective on the historical moment we are going through and on the role that certain moral leaderships can play in it.
We live in times when hate speech, exclusion, and the dehumanization of the different advance with disturbing normality. The suffering of others is trivialized, the vulnerable are singled out (the migrant, the poor, the different), and political narratives are constructed that erode coexistence and fracture our societies. In that context, the Pope's visit acquires a dimension that transcends the spiritual; it is, above all, a profoundly political act, in the best sense of the word.
Political because it challenges society as a whole. Because it sends a clear message of solidarity, peace, and love for one's neighbor in the face of those who seek to impose fear and rejection as a form of social organization. And because it places at the center of the debate values that should be non-negotiable in any advanced democracy.
In the Canary Islands, this message also resonates with its own history that we must not forget. Progressive nationalism has known how to draw from a deeply rooted tradition in grassroots Christian movements, which for decades combined humanism with the struggle for social justice. Those groups understood that faith could not be alien to people's material reality, that human dignity was non-negotiable, and that solidarity should translate into transformative political action.
In that same vein, it is pertinent to support the recent words of the bishop of the Canary Islands, José Mazuelos Pérez, who responded firmly to the statements of the far-right leader, Santiago Abascal. Faced with attempts to instrumentalize religious fact to justify exclusionary discourses, the bishop recalled that the Christian message cannot be separated from the defense of human dignity, welcome, and fraternity. His words were not only necessary but also coherent with that tradition of Christianity committed to the most vulnerable that has contributed so much to our land.
That positioning shows that we are not facing a superficial or anecdotal debate. What is at stake is the very meaning of the values we claim to defend as a society. And, in that arena, the voice of those who appeal to justice, empathy, and coexistence is more essential today than ever.
That is why the frivolity with which some parties are approaching this visit is particularly worrying. Reducing it to a spectacle, an opportunity for promotion, or a simple mass event is, at its core, a way of depoliticizing (in the worst sense) a message that precisely demands the opposite from us. It demands reflection, commitment, and historical responsibility.
It is not about sharing or not the religious beliefs of the Pope. It is about recognizing the relevance of a discourse that appeals to empathy in times of indifference, to justice in times of inequality, and to encounter in times of confrontation.
Canary Islands, as a land of welcome, of miscegenation and of coexistence, has the opportunity to place itself once again on the right side of history. Listening to that message, critically assuming it and transferring it to daily political action is the real challenge.
