Roberto Benigni-show from the Pope: he calls Meloni “Mr. President”, gives a kiss to Francis and proposes that he “run for office together”

«I greet all the boys and girls, an affectionate greeting to all the sick children, I greet all the mothers, the fathers, the grandmothers, the grandfathers and all the carers. I greet all the Cardinals and all the important people who are here: the mayor of Rome Gualtieri and Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni». It begins like this, with a very funny “Mr. President” that does not go unnoticed, Roberto Benigni’s monologue in St. Peter’s Square in front of the Pope for World Children’s Day. Giorgia Meloni, framed immediately afterwards, actually reacts with a broken smile. On the other hand, it was she, at the beginning of her mandate, who formally indicated that she wanted to be called that, and Benigni respected her wishes.

Speaking after the Angelus prayer, Roberto Benigni, as per his habit, decided in an irreverent but always smiling way to go and kiss Pope Francis: «What’s the point of kisses if you don’t give them? We have kisses to give them. So I’ll give them one worth a hundred thousand, from all of them”, said Benigni, approaching the Pope, who reciprocated by thanking him.

Benigni then addressed the audience of children, telling them that as a child he wanted to be Pope, and everyone laughed. «Seeing that everyone was laughing like that, then I decided to be a comedian. If they had knelt I would really have been Pope, and it would have been dangerous”, said Benigni, proposing to Pope Francis to run together with him in the next papal “elections”.

Among Benigni’s most beautiful messages to children, a very simple one, the ugliness of war. An “ugly, dirty” word, you can’t listen to it. Something that must stop, because «when children play war, as soon as one gets hurt, the game stops: end of the game. But why don’t they stop when they wage war on the first child who gets hurt?”

Finally, the invitation to the little ones in the public in St. Peter’s Square: «Take flight, take your life into your own hands and make a masterpiece of itbuild a better world, we haven’t succeeded. Make the world more beautiful: the world needs it, and you can do it.” «Try to do nice things, make others happyand to do that you have to be happy. Be happybecome the adult you would have wanted around you when you were a child.”