Pope Leo XIV hosted Bob Dylan for a private meeting at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican on Wednesday, during a break between the musician’s concerts in Italy. Dylan performed in Milan on Monday and is scheduled to perform in Rome on Thursday. The Vatican newspaper reported that the pope had received "Mr. Robert Allen Zimmerman," Dylan’s birth name.
Dylan, 85, a Nobel laureate in literature, arrived wearing a black coat, gloves and sweatshirt, along with a loosely knotted tie. In photographs released by the Vatican, he appeared with his hood pulled over his head. The images of Dylan and the pope together — one dressed in black, the other in white — amused social media users, who also commented on the musician’s "interesting" fashion choice.
According to Vatican News, the meeting was brief and included greetings and light conversation. The pope presented Dylan with a rosary, while Dylan gave him a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. Father Antonio Spadaro, a senior official in the Vatican’s culture department who accompanied Dylan, said the singer had wanted to speak with the pope and that the two met privately for several minutes.
In July, Leo quoted a line from "Go Away You Bomb," an anti-nuclear weapons song Dylan wrote in 1963 but never recorded, in the introduction to Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, a collection of his writings on peace. Spadaro wrote in the Vatican newspaper that the Chicago-born pope had grown up listening to Dylan’s music. He also noted that Dylan dedicated a song in 1967 to St. Augustine, for whom Leo’s religious order is named.
(Photo: AFP PHOTO / VATICAN MEDIA)
Dylan was born into a Jewish family in Duluth, Minnesota, and converted to Christianity in 1979, a move that alienated some of his longtime fans. In recent years, he has been more guarded about his religious beliefs. In a 2022 interview with The Wall Street Journal, he described himself as a religious person who reads scripture, meditates and prays.
In 1997, Dylan performed before Pope John Paul II at a concert in Bologna, singing "Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door," "A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall" and "Forever Young." Not everyone welcomed his appearance at the time. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, wrote in 2007 that he had opposed the performance and tried to prevent it.