Pope Leo XIV welcomed Bob Dylan to the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican on Wednesday, 4 November, in a meeting that brought together the head of the Catholic Church and one of the most influential figures in modern American music. The conversation took place in the Apostolic Library, and both men left the encounter with a gift in hand.
The pope gave Dylan a rosary. In return, the singer presented the pontiff with the first volume of his autobiography, Chronicles. Dylan, who is 85 and was in Italy as part of a European tour, arrived dressed in black, wearing gloves and a hood. The pope, dressed in white, was pictured smiling during the exchange. The Vatican press office released some photographs of the meeting.
The audience comes after the pope publicly acknowledged Dylan's work in July. In a prologue to a book published by the Vatican publishing house LEV, titled Desarmado y desarmante. La paz es un regalo (Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift), the pope cited a line from «Go Away You Bomb», a 1963 protest song that Dylan never officially recorded. The book warns against global rearmament and the spread of nuclear weapons. It was edited by the journalist Alessandro Banfi.
The song's manuscript was rediscovered in 2013, which is why the lyric drew attention when the pope quoted it. Its use in a papal book on peace underlined a long-standing link between Dylan's protest writing and questions of war and conscience, themes that have run through his work since the early 1960s.
The meeting is also part of a wider pattern of contact between the Holy See and cultural figures. In July, the pope met the American musician Patti Smith, who recently received the Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts. Dylan himself has a previous connection to the papacy: in 1997 he performed before Pope John Paul II at a Eucharistic congress in Bologna, Italy.
The purpose of the audience has not been stated publicly. Reporting on the encounter has drawn on EFE and Vatican News, and the details available so far concern the setting, the gifts and the atmosphere of the conversation rather than any announced initiative.