At the Vatican, Dylan Meets Pope Leo After Song Linked Them to Peace

A brief Vatican meeting

Dylan, 85, met Leo, 71, at the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City on Wednesday, November 4. He wore a black hoodie, matching trousers, gloves and a polka dot scarf.

Vatican News described the visit as brief. Leo gave Dylan a rosary, and Dylan handed the pope a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One.

A protest song in Leo’s book

Months before the meeting, Leo quoted Dylan’s unpublished protest song “Go Away You Bomb” in Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, released this summer. The pope quoted the line, “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned an’ man-handled.” Dylan wrote the song in 1963 for the Greenwich Village Protest Center’s Izzy Young. Young told Rolling Stone in 2013 that he had asked people he knew to write about the nuclear bomb, and Dylan brought him a song the next day.

Other stars meet the pope

Dylan is not the first music star to meet Leo, the first American-born pope. Patti Smith wrote on Instagram in July that meeting Leo was “a moment that shall forever produce a smile.” Leo also spoke to reporters about young people seeking spiritual meaning. He said some might choose to see Bad Bunny rather than the pope, but added that others would come to see him, “and that says something.”

Leo’s election as pontiff

Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost, was named pope in May 2025 after international cardinals chose Pope Francis’ successor. Francis had died one month earlier, aged 88. In a speech at the time, Leo thanked the cardinals who chose him and called for peace and justice. He described himself as “a son of Saint Augustine, an Augustinian” and urged people to walk together toward the homeland God had prepared.