Pope: 'Weapon Makers Are Not Christians'

Pope Francis has said people who make weapons or invest in arms industries are hypocrites if they call themselves Christians.

The 78-year-old issued his strongest criticism to date of weapons manufacturers at a rally of thousands of young people in the Italian city of Turin.

"If you trust only men you have lost," he said to applause during a speech about war, money and politics.

"It makes me think of ... people, managers, businessmen who call themselves Christian and they manufacture weapons. That leads to a bit a distrust, doesn't it?"

He also criticised those who invest in defence companies, saying "duplicity is the currency of today ... they say one thing and do another."

Francis also spoke about bloodshed in the Second World War, saying: "The great powers had the pictures of the railway lines that brought the trains to the concentration camps like Auschwitz to kill Jews, Christians, homosexuals, everybody.

"Why didn't they bomb (the railway lines)?"

He also decried the deaths of Christians in Russian gulags under the Stalin dictatorship, which followed the war.

Discussing World War One, he spoke of "the great tragedy of Armenia" but did not use the word "genocide".

He sparked a diplomatic row in April by calling the massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by Turkish Ottomans "the first genocide of the 20th century".

The word caused anger in Turkey, which recalled its ambassador to the Vatican in protest.

Francis reiterated his view that conflicts in the world today are tantamount to "a Third World War in segments".