Oscar winning actor, comedian and director Roberto Benigni will return to Rai state TV after a decade and recount the figure of St Peter in a monologue marking the end of the Roman Catholic Jubilee Holy Year in December, Rai Managing Director Giampaolo Rossi said Friday.
    "It will be an extraordinary event with Roberto Benigni who tells the story of Peter from the heart of the Vatican.

A prime time show broadcast in December on Rai1 for the closing of the Jubilee"., said Rossi at the presentation of the year's broadcasting schedules in Naples.
    "I strongly wanted his return to Rai, he had been missing for a decade", he added, explaining that he will be "the interpreter of the figure of Peter: from the symbolic heart of the Vatican a story that unites art and faith, a work that embodies the function of public service".
    Life Is Beautiful Oscar winner Benigni, a 72-year-old madcap Tuscan comic, actor and director, garnered a whopping audience with a monologue on "Europe, The Dream" on Raiuno in March.
    He has previously got record figures for monologues on Dante and the Italian Constitution too, as well as starring as a barely controllable guest at the Sanremo Song Festival on more than one occasion.
    The entertainer is a Catholic believer as well as leftwing sympathiser and activist.

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