This afternoon at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, Leo met with Benigni, along with Giampaolo Rossi, CEO of Rai, and Simona Ercolani, CEO and creative director of Stand by Me, the producer, together with Vatican Media, of the monologue Peter, a Man in the Wind.
The monologue will be broadcast on Rai1 on December 10 in prime time and recently had its world premiere at the MAXXI Museum in Rome.
The Pope, according to the Vatican Press Office, saw excerpts of the monologue.
“How beautiful, it speaks of love,” he commented at the end.
During the meeting, before the screening, the Pope and Benigni discussed cinema and Life is Beautiful, which the Pope recently listed among his four favourite films, along with Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life.
The Pope and Benigni discussed the lives of St. Peter, Dante and St. Augustine, as well as The Divine Comedy and Confessions.
Also attending the meeting were Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication, Stefano D’Agostini, Director of Vatican Media and several of Benigni’s collaborators.
The Vatican recently said Leo’s favourite films are It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) by Frank Capra; The Sound of Music (1965) by Robert Wise; Ordinary People (1980) by Robert Redford; and Life is Beautiful (1997) by Benigni.
Benigni, 73, a well-known leftwinger and practising Catholic who has previously drawn huge Rai audiences for monologues on The Divine Comedy, the Ten Commandments, the European Union and the Italian Constitution, among other things, said earlier Thursday he had fallen in love with St. Peter “just because he is exactly like us”.
“We are going to recount the dark side of Peter,” he said, adding that “Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law, and we don’t know if he was happy about that.”
ANSA
