Bob Dylan Meets Pope Leo XIV During Italian Concert Tour

Bob Dylan visited Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Wednesday during a pause in his Italian concert schedule. The American singer, songwriter and poet met privately with the American pontiff for a few minutes, according to the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican culture ministry official who accompanied him.

The Vatican described the visit as brief and said the two exchanged gifts. Leo gave Dylan a rosary, while the musician offered a copy of his autobiography, "Chronicles: Volume One." Dylan wore a black hoodie with a loosely worn tie, and photographs released by the Vatican showed him keeping his hood up during the encounter.

Dylan's writing had already found a place in Leo's work. In his 2026 book, "Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift," the pope quoted from "Go Away You Bomb," an unpublished protest song Dylan wrote in 1963. Leo used the song's words, directed at an imagined atomic bomb, in a warning about the race to rearm and the use of nuclear weapons.

Spadaro said Dylan had wanted to speak with the pope. Joining them was Andrea Monda, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Spadaro, who also accompanied Patti Smith to an audience with Leo in July, wrote about Dylan's visit in an essay for the newspaper.

In that account, Spadaro noted that Leo, formerly Robert Prevost, was born in Chicago in 1955 and grew up knowing Dylan's music. He also pointed to the musician's familiarity with St. Augustine of Hippo, whose influence underpins Leo's spirituality and Augustinian religious order. Dylan wrote "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" for his 1967 album "John Wesley Harding."

The visit was another papal encounter for Dylan, who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. In 1997, he performed before Pope John Paul II and thousands of others in Bologna, Italy, at a concert concluding a religious congress.

Born Robert Zimmerman to a Jewish family in Minnesota, Dylan became a born-again Christian in 1979. Songs including "Gotta Serve Somebody" and "Saved" alienated some longtime listeners. He has spoken more cautiously about his beliefs in recent years, though he described himself as a "religious person" in a 2022 Wall Street Journal interview and said he reads scripture, meditates and prays.

Dylan performed in Milan on Monday and is scheduled to play Rome on Thursday. At his last concert before the Vatican visit, he sang "Tryin' to Get to Heaven," his 1997 song about trying to reach heaven before its door closes.