Bob Dylan has met Pope Leo XIV. The 85-year-old singer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, was welcomed at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican on Wednesday afternoon, 4 November. He was in Rome during a break in his tour of Italy.
The Vatican said the meeting was brief. It was mostly greetings and a few light, friendly words between the two men.
A rosary and a book
The pope gave Dylan a rosary. Dylan gave the pope a copy of “Chronicles: Volume One”, his autobiography.
Dylan came dressed his own way. He wore a black hoodie with a loose tie, and in the photos from the Vatican he kept the hood up over his head. The outfit got a lot of people talking online.
Two Bobs from the Midwest
Pope Leo XIV was born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, and he is the first pope from the United States. Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman and grew up in Minnesota. So this was a meeting of two men called Bob from the American Midwest.
It was also not the first time the pope has turned to Dylan’s words. In July he quoted Dylan in the preface of a Vatican book about peace. He used lines from “Go Away You Bomb”, a protest song Dylan wrote in 1963 against nuclear weapons. Dylan never officially recorded it, and the handwritten lyrics were only found in 2013.
There is one more link between them. Back in 1967, Dylan put a song called “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” on his album “John Wesley Harding”. Saint Augustine is the saint behind the pope’s own religious order, the Augustinians.
Not his first pope
Dylan has done this before. In September 1997 he sang for Pope John Paul II at a big church event in Bologna, in front of about 300,000 young people. He played three songs, including “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”. Then he took off his cowboy hat, walked up to the pope and shook his hand.
This time there was no concert at the Vatican. Fans in Rome can hear him on Thursday night, 5 November, when he plays the Palazzo dello Sport.
Our take
It is not every day you see a music legend in a hoodie standing next to the pope. Dylan has always done things his own way, and he clearly was not going to change for this visit.
Still, there is something sweet about it. Two men from the same part of America, both named Bob, swapped gifts and had a few laughs. Then one of them went back to his tour, with a rosary to take home.
Which Bob Dylan song would you have played for the pope? Tell us in the comments.
Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Bob Dylan at the Azkena Rock Festival in Vitoria-Gasteiz in 2010 by Alberto Cabello (CC BY 2.0); Pope Leo XIV in May 2025 by Edgar Beltrán, The Pillar (CC BY-SA 4.0); the Apostolic Palace seen from St. Peter’s Square by Jebulon (CC0); Bob Dylan at the White House in 2010 by Pete Souza, The White House (public domain).
