Retire the old, give jobs to young: Pope

Older people should be made to work less or retire earlier to create employment for younger generations, Pope Francis says.

Older people should be made to work less or retire earlier to create employment for younger generations, Pope Francis says, making a renewed call for social justice.

"There is an urgency for a new human social pact, a new social pact for work that should reduce working hours for those at the end of their working lives, to create work for the young, who have a right and a duty to work," the Pope said.

Speaking during an audience with Catholic-linked Italian trade union CISL, Francis said "a society that forces old people to work for too long and forces an entire generation of young people not work ... is stupid and short-sighted."

Francis, who is 80, also criticised so-called "golden pensions," which grant generous payments to selected categories of Italian workers.

He said work must be accompanied by a "healthy culture of leisure .. which is not laziness, but a human necessity."

A critic of capitalist excess, the Pope has often decried Europe's youth unemployment crisis, saying it discourages young people from starting a family. But many economists deny that pushing older people out of the labour market would create jobs for the young.