Bob Dylan met with Pope Leo XIV Wednesday at the Vatican during a break between his concert dates in Italy.
The American singer-songwriter, who was wearing a black hooded sweatshirt and a polka-dot tie, presented the Pope with a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One.
Leo, 71, gave the 85-year-old singer a rosary during the brief encounter “consisting of greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges,” according to the Vatican.
Two Vatican officials accompanied Dylan: the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican culture ministry official and Andrea Monda, the editor of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Spadaro said the Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door singer wanted to speak with Leo, and the two met in private for a few minutes.
“It was hard not to feel the emotion of being part of an encounter that had a real sense of history about it, with the feeling that, at every step through the Apostolic Palace, absolutely anything could happen,” Spadaro wrote in a post on X.
Dylan and Leo were pictured shaking hands and seated at a table for a brief conversation.
Leo had quoted from an unpublished protest song Dylan penned in 1963, Go Away You Bomb, in his 2026 book Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, according to The Associated Press.
Leo was warning against the race to rearm and the recourse to nuclear weapons and quoted the lyric, addressed to a hypothetical atomic bomb: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an’ man-handled.”
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Leo is not the first pope that Dylan has met.
The Like a Rolling Stone singer had previously met with Pope John Paul II, and thousands of other people, in 1997 during a concert capping a religious congress in Bologna, Italy.
Dylan’s visit with Leo took place ahead of his scheduled performance at the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome on Wednesday, which is one of his many stops on the European leg of his Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour.
Dylan, who changed his name from Robert Zimmerman, was born to a Jewish family in Minnesota. He famously became a born-again Christian in 1979.
In recent years, Dylan has spoken about his religious beliefs.
In a 2022 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dylan said that he was a “religious person.”
“I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it,” Dylan said.
Leo has met with several musicians this past year.
In June, he met with Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny while they were both touring in Spain.
“If they are confronted with the question do they want to see Bad Bunny or do they want to see the pope, I think many will see Bad Bunny,” Leo said to CNN at the time. “But I think there will also be a few here to see the pope. And that says something.”
Leo also met with singer-songwriter Patti Smith in July.
“Pope Leo XIV met the American singer-songwriter, poet, and artist, Patti Smith, during a private audience at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on Friday morning, July 31. Smith is, like the Pope, originally from Chicago in the USA,” the Vatican said.
Smith shared a picture from the meeting to Instagram to celebrate Leo’s birthday in September, with the caption, “This is thinking of Pope Leo today on his birthday, with gratitude for his teachings and great appreciation for the humble splendor of his mind.”
—With files from The Associated Press
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