Bob Dylan visits Pope Leo XIV in Rome

Bob Dylan met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Wednesday.

The encounter took place during a break in Dylan's European concert schedule. The two men spent a few minutes together in private. The Vatican described the meeting as brief.

During the visit, Leo presented Dylan with a rosary. Dylan gave the pope a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican culture ministry official, accompanied Dylan to the meeting. Andrea Monda, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, was also present.

Spadaro said Dylan had expressed a desire to speak with Leo. In an essay for L'Osservatore Romano, Spadaro noted that Leo, born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, grew up familiar with Dylan's music. Spadaro also pointed out that Dylan wrote the song I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine for the 1967 album John Wesley Harding. St. Augustine is a key figure in the Augustinian order to which Leo belongs.

Leo has previously referenced Dylan's work in his own writing. In his 2026 book Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, the pope quoted lyrics from an unpublished 1963 Dylan song titled Go Away You Bomb. The lyric read, I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an' man-handled. Leo used the quote to warn against the race to rearm and the use of nuclear weapons.

Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, wore a black hoodie with the hood up and a loose tie during the meeting. He was born Robert Zimmerman to a Jewish family in Minnesota. He 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 scriptures, meditates, and prays.

This is not Dylan's first interaction with a pope. He performed for Pope John Paul II in 1997 during a concert in Bologna, Italy. Dylan played a concert in Milan on Monday. He is scheduled to play in Rome on Thursday. In his most recent show before the Vatican meeting, Dylan performed the 1997 song Tryin' to Get to Heaven.