Pope Francis has urged World leaders to pay attention to creating employment for the teeming youths all over the World.
In his year-end message delivered on Saturday, Francis advised that more work should be done in 2017 to tackle the problem of unemployment.
He warned tat a generation was being lost to desperation, migration and joblessness stressing that doors must be opened for young people.
“So that they can be capable of dreaming and fighting for their dreams”.
“We have condemned our young people to have no place in society, because we have slowly pushed them to the margins of public life, forcing them to migrate or to beg for jobs that no longer exist or fail to promise them a future,” he stated in his homily.
Reuters reports that youth joblessness in Italy stands at more than 36 percent and tops 18 percent among the 28 European Union states.
As stated by the International Labour Organization (ILO), youth unemployment in Africa increased in 2016 and was nearing 30 per cent in North Africa.
Poverty and lack of opportunity in Africa is driving migration, particularly to Europe.
Almost 5,000 men, women and children died attempting to reach Europe by boat from North Africa in 2016.
Among the more than 181,000 boat migrants – mostly African – who reached Italy in 2016, 25,000 were unaccompanied minor.
At the end of the service, Pope Francis walked across St. Peter’s Square, stopping to shake hands and pose for pictures, as he paid a brief visit to the life-size nativity set up outside.