Pope’s interview to Argentina slams "throwaway culture" that discards unemployed youth

November 29, 2013 - Pope Francis took on the issue of high youth unemployment in his first interview aired exclusively in his native Argentina on Wednesday, warning that today's "throwaway culture" had discarded a generation of young Europeans. A day after issuing his 84-page Apostolic Letter, “Evangelii Gaudium” or “The Joy of the Gospel”, where he blasted unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny," the pontiff used the interview aired on the TN TV channel to link high European unemployment to its twin problem of neglecting older people who are past their earning prime. "Today we are living in unjust international system in which 'King Money' is at the center," he said in the interview. "It's a throwaway culture that discards young people as well as its older people. In some European countries, without mentioning names, there is youth unemployment of 40 percent and higher," he added. "A whole generation of young people does not have the dignity that is brought by work." "A people that cares neither for its youth nor for its older people has no future," the pope said. "Young people take society into the future, while the older generation gives society its memory, its wisdom."
Previously archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio became history’s first non-European and first Jesuit pontiff on March 19 this year. He has called for a more austere Church that sides with the poor. (Source: AP)