Pope Francis decried Europe's "indifferent and anaesthetised conscience" over migrants at Good Friday prayers in Rome in which he also slammed paedophile priests, arms dealers, fundamentalists and religious persecutors.

"O Cross of Christ, today we see you in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas which have become insatiable cemeteries, reflections of our indifferent and anaesthetised conscience," the 79-year old pontiff said, referring to the thousands who set off in unseaworthy boars to reach Greece and the rest of Europe.

In a wide-ranging diatribe he also raged against the ills within the Church, fiercely denouncing paedophile priests, those "unfaithful ministers who, instead of stripping themselves of their own vain ambitions, divest even the innocent of their dignity".