Pope: Education, jobs will prevent radicalization

Jane Onyanga-Omara | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Raw: Pope Francis Greets Nairobi Youth Rally Pope Francis attended a huge youth rally in Nairobi, Kenya's Kasarani sports stadium on Friday. It's his final event in Kenya, the first stop of his three-nation Africa tour. (Nov. 27)

Pope Francis said Friday that education and jobs will prevent young people from being radicalized and heading off to join militant groups.

The pontiff, who was visiting Kenya’s capital Nairobi, was asked what young people can do to prevent their friends and relatives from joining militants, such as the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabab, based in neighboring Somalia. Kenyans make up most of foreign fighters in al-Shabab's ranks.

“If a young person has no work, what kind of a future does he or she have? " the pope said. "That’s where the idea of being recruited comes from.”

Earlier Friday, the pope denounced the conditions that many are forced to live in during a visit to a slum in Nairobi.

The pontiff said that access to safe water is a basic human right during the trip to the Kangemi area in the northwest of the city, where about 50,000 people live without basic sanitation.

He said that everyone should have dignified, adequate housing, with a sewage system, garbage collection and electricity as well as schools, hospitals and sport facilities.

"The culture of poor neighborhoods has positive values…each human being is more important than the god of money," he said, according to Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper. He added that the suffering of the poor is caused by a greedy minority.

Denouncing the "injustice of urban exclusion" and the unfair distribution of land, he criticized "faceless private developers who grab even playgrounds where the children of the poor are supposed to recreate," the Daily Nation said.

He added: "These are wounds inflicted by minorities who cling to power and wealth, who selfishly squander while a growing majority is forced to flee to abandoned, filthy and run-down peripheries."

"To deny a family water, under any bureaucratic pretext whatsoever, is a great injustice, especially when one profits from this need."

The pope also attended a youth rally at the Kasarani Stadium, where he urged attendees to resist the temptation of corruption. “It’s in all the institutions, including in the Vatican there are cases of corruption,” he said. Revelations in two new books have detailed gross mismanagement and waste at the Vatican.

He later departed for neighboring Uganda, where his engagements include visiting President Yoweri Museveni at the state house.

Pope Francis arrived in Kenya on Wednesday as part of a six-day visit to the continent, which includes a trip to the Central African Republic.

Contributing: Associated Press