Dylan Meets Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican in Rome During Italian Tour Break
A brief private meeting
Dylan met Leo for a few minutes on Wednesday, according to the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican culture ministry official who accompanied the singer. The Vatican said the meeting was brief. Leo gave Dylan a rosary, while Dylan offered the pope a copy of “Chronicles: Volume One.” Spadaro and Andrea Monda, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, were also present.
A song cited by Leo
In his 2026 book “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift,” Leo cited “Go Away You Bomb,” an unpublished protest song Dylan wrote in 1963. The pope was warning about the race to rearm and the use of nuclear weapons. The lyric Leo quoted addressed a hypothetical atomic bomb: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an' man-handled.”
Shared links to music and faith
Spadaro wrote that Leo, formerly Robert Prevost, grew up familiar with Dylan’s music. Prevost was born in Chicago in 1955. Dylan also wrote “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” for his 1967 album “John Wesley Harding.” St. Augustine inspired Leo’s spirituality and his Augustinian religious order, Spadaro noted.
Dylan’s papal and religious history
Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, previously performed for Pope John Paul II and thousands of others at a 1997 religious congress concert in Bologna, Italy. He was born Robert Zimmerman to a Jewish family in Minnesota and became a born-again Christian in 1979. In a 2022 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dylan described himself as a “religious person” who reads scripture, meditates and prays. He played in Milan on Monday and was due to perform in Rome on Thursday; his most recent concert before the meeting included “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven.”
Key points
- Pope Leo XIV met Bob Dylan privately at the Vatican during the singer’s Italian concert dates.
- Leo gave Dylan a rosary, and Dylan gave the pope his autobiography.
- Leo had cited Dylan’s 1963 protest song in a 2026 book on peace.
- Dylan was scheduled to perform in Rome on Thursday after playing Milan on Monday.