Bob Dylan has audience with Pope Leo XIV
Pope Leo XIV had a private audience with Bob Dylan at his official residence, the Apostolic Palace, on Wednesday (04.11.26).
Pope Leo XIV had a private audience with Bob Dylan on Wednesday (04.11.26).
The Knockin' on Heaven's Door hitmaker - who was in Rome ahead of his Rough and Rowdy Ways concert at the Palazzo dello Sport on Thursday (05.11.26) - paid a visit to the pope's official residence, the Apostolic Palace, for what Vatican News described as a "brief" meeting.
The pope presented his guest with a rosary, while the 85-year-old folk legend handed over a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One.
The pair posed for photographs, with the pontiff's all-white outfit contrasting starkly with Dylan's black ensemble.
The meeting was arranged with the help of Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official who also helped set up the pope's encounter with Patti Smith earlier this year.
He wrote on X: “Today, I had the privilege and the joy of accompanying #BobDylan to meet Pope Leo, together with Andrea Monda. 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!
"Carlo Feltrinelli and Susan Pullman were also with us. On July 31, Pope Leo had met with Patti Smith. I’m writing about it in L’Osservatore Romano."
Pope Leo previously referenced Dylan in the preface to a book titled Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, quoting the singer's unreleased track Go Away You Bomb.
He quoted the line: "I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an' man-handled."
The track was written amid the Cold War in 1963 but never recorded. Its lyrics were discovered in 2013 and put up for auction, when they were seen for the first time.
This isn't the first time the Like a Rolling Stone singer has met with a head of the Catholic Church.
In 1997, he was invited to perform in front of Pope John Paul II and about 300,000 young people for the 23rd National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna.
During the concert, he played four songs and reportedly climbed onto the stage mid-set to shake hands with the pope and exchange a few words.
The then-Pope quoted Dylan's classic song Blowin' in the Wind in his sermon to the crowd.
He said: “You asked me: how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? I answer you: one! There is only one road of man and it is Christ, who said: ‘I am the way.’
“The answer is blowing in the wind… but there is an evil wind that pushes towards nothingness, and there is the wind of the Holy Spirit that leads to God.”
