Bob Dylan, the 85-year-old Nobel laureate, met Pope Leo XIV at the Apostolic Palace on Wednesday afternoon, reviving a tradition of encounters between rock royalty and the papacy. The audience, described as brief and intimate, saw the Pope present Dylan with a rosary, while the singer offered a copy of his memoir, Chronicles: Volume One.
Father Antonio Spadaro, who accompanied Dylan alongside Andrea Monda, editor of L'Osservatore Romano, shared the moment on social media. "Today I accompanied Bob Dylan to see Pope Leo. Not without the emotion of experiencing a meeting that has the flavour of history and the feeling that, at every step in the Apostolic Palace, anything could have happened!" he wrote, posting photographs of the two figures together.
Dylan, dressed in his signature black sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his head, is in Rome for a stop on his ongoing tour, performing Thursday evening at the Palazzo dello Sport. The meeting was not a spontaneous gesture; it followed the Pope's recent reference to Dylan's 1963 protest song Go Away You Bomb in a preface to a Vatican-published book on peace, Disarmata e disarmante. La pace è un dono. Leo XIV quoted the lyric, "I hate you because man made you and man owns you and man handles you," to underscore his warnings against rearmament and nuclear escalation.
A history of papal encounters
This is not Dylan's first audience with a pontiff. In 1997, he performed at the National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna before Pope John Paul II and an estimated 300,000 young people. After singing three songs, including Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Dylan removed his cowboy hat and shook the Pope's hand. On that occasion, John Paul II quoted Blowin' in the Wind in his address, asking, "How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?" and offering his own answer: "Only one. There is only one road for man, and it is that of Jesus Christ."
Dylan's spiritual journey has been as eclectic as his music. Raised in a Jewish family, he underwent a public conversion to Christianity in the late 1970s, releasing a trilogy of gospel-infused albums—Slow Train Coming, Saved, and Shot of Love—before returning to a more varied repertoire. In recent interviews, he has described himself as a religious person who reads the Scriptures, meditates, and prays regularly.
For Pope Leo XIV, music holds a special significance. In his first year, he has often spoken of its communicative and spiritual power, even singing the Regina Caeli and Pater Noster in Latin during public appearances. At the Jubilee for choirs and choral groups in November 2025, he described music as a gift of great civilisations, capable of expressing what lies deep in our hearts. Quoting Saint Augustine, he said, "Cantare amantis est—singing is characteristic of one who loves."
The meeting between Dylan and the Pope underscores the enduring dialogue between faith and popular culture, a theme that resonates across Europe. As Dylan continues his tour, the image of the troubadour and the pontiff exchanging gifts serves as a reminder of the soft power of art in a continent often preoccupied with political and economic challenges. For more on the Vatican's recent engagements, see the Pope's unusual ballot and the popemobile exhibition.
