Pope Francis has called on church leaders for a "change in mentality", saying the Christian faith is less heeded in the modern world.

Axar.az reports citing RFI that new methods were needed to help "reposition our ways of thinking and our attitudes", the pope warned in his traditional Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia, the Vatican's top administrative body.

"We are no longer the only ones today to produce culture, neither the first nor the most listened to," the Argentinian pontiff Pope Francis said.

"We are no longer in a regime of Christianity because faith -- especially in Europe, but also in a large part of the West -- is no longer an obvious presupposition of living together; worse, it is often denied, mocked, marginalised and ridiculed."