FRANCIS URGES ACTION ON YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT
VATICAN CITY— Pope Francis in his yearend message urged leaders on Saturday to do more to tackle youth unemployment, saying a generation was being lost to desperation, migration and joblessness.
At his last public event of 2016, an evening vespers service in St. Peter’s Basilica, the 80-yearold Francis said doors had to 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 said in his homily.
The Pope noted the paradox of “a culture that idolizes youth” and yet has made no place for the young.
More than responsibility, Francis said the world owed young people “a debt” because they have been deprived of “dignified and genuine work” that would allow them to take part in society, instead condemning them “to knock on doors that for the most part remain closed.”
Youth joblessness in Italy stands at more than 36 percent and tops 18 percent among the 28 European Union states.
In Africa, the continent with the world’s youngest population, youth unemployment probably increased in 2016, and was near 30 percent in North Africa, according to the International Labor Organization.
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 minors, double the number who came in 2015.
Francis strolled through St. Peter’s Square on Saturday evening during the last frigid hours of 2016, exchanging New Year’s Eve greetings with the faithful.
Francis made his way through the crowd to pray in front of the life-size Nativity scene following the traditional vespers, also called evening prayer, inside St. Peter’s Basilica.
Along the way, he stopped to kiss children on the cheek and shake hands with well-wishers, occasionally accepting small gifts that he handed off to his bodyguards.
People in the crowd held up their cell phones and tablets to snap pictures of the Pontiff.