World Children’s Day, Benigni to the Pope: “We, together with the elections, make a broad field”
This morning the Oscar-winning actor's monologue in St. Peter's Square
ROME – The celebrations for the first World Children’s Day, which began yesterday at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, continued this morning in St. Peter’s Square. After the Angelus prayer there was a speech by Roberto Benigni. When I was little they asked me “what do you want to be when you grow up and I answered very seriously: the Pope and everyone laughing. And since they were laughing I decided to be a comedian. Becoming the pope… almost at the next elections I’ll introduce myself too. Let’s get together and make a wide field. Let’s put Mario Bergoglio, known as Francesco, on the sheet, let’s win immediately.” Roberto Benigni says it in St. Peter’s Square on the occasion of ‘World Children’s Day’. Look at this “blue sky, today everything is blue, in the Vatican City. The smallest state in the world where there is the greatest man in the world”.
BENIGNI GREETS THE POPE WITH A KISS: A BEAUTIFUL EMOTION
Arriving I met “two Swiss guards who told me Benigni can do everything, only one thing he cannot do, he cannot touch the Pope. Since they told me I have wanted to do only that. < /strong>Like Adam and Eve when they said don’t eat the apple and they zap. Can I give them a kiss? What’s the point if they don’t give themselves?”, said Benigni. Here, he continues, “from all of them, a kiss worth a hundred thousand. A kiss to Pope Francis. A kiss to the Pope, a beautiful emotion, if you open me I’m full of happiness, full of joy like a watermelon”.
KIND-TO-CHILDREN: BUILD A BETTER WORLD, WE HAVEN’T SUCCEEDED
“Take your life into your own hands and make a masterpiece of it. Build a better world because we haven’t succeeded. The world needs to be beautiful and you can and must do it, do it Each of you makes your own small but concrete contribution towards good or evil. Make your contribution towards good make others happy, not better, but only one person needs to be made better : themselves,” said the Oscar-winning actor.
BENIGNI: WAR IS THE MOST SERIOUS AND STUPID OF SINS, IT MUST END
War “is the gravest and most stupid of sins. An ugly word, it dirty everything. Yet we must put an end to this thing. When children play war if one gets hurt they stop”. In wars “to the first child who suffers, who gets hurt, because they don’t stop. The war must end. We must forget it. You will say it’s a dream, a fairy tale. Yes, it’s like that. Gianni Rodari he said that fairy tales can become reality. And he’s right.”