Bob Dylan visits Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, trading a rosary for a memoir

Bob Dylan showed up at the Vatican on Wednesday, and Pope Leo XIV opened the door. The American singer-songwriter and Nobel laureate met the American pope during a break between his Italian concert dates, in an encounter the Vatican described as brief.

The gifts went both ways. Leo handed Dylan a rosary; Dylan handed the pope a copy of his autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume One.” Vatican photos showed the singer in a black hoodie and a loose tie, hood pulled up over his head.

There's a literary thread here. Leo quoted Dylan's unpublished 1963 protest song “Go Away You Bomb” in his 2026 book “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift,” using the lyric — “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an' man-handled” — while warning against the rush to rearm and the recourse to nuclear weapons.

Two Vatican officials accompanied Dylan: the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a culture ministry official who also escorted Patti Smith to a July audience with Leo, and Andrea Monda, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Spadaro wrote in L'Osservatore Romano that Dylan had wanted to speak with the pope and that the two met privately for a few minutes. He noted that the future pope, born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, grew up around Dylan's music — and that Dylan knows St. Augustine of Hippo well, the inspiration behind Leo's spirituality and Augustinian order. Dylan wrote “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” for his 1967 album John Wesley Harding.

It wasn't his first time face to face with a pontiff. Dylan played for Pope John Paul II in 1997, along with thousands of others, at a Bologna concert capping a religious congress.

Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman to a Jewish family in Minnesota, famously became a born-again Christian in 1979, alienating some longtime fans with songs like “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “Saved.” He's been quieter about his beliefs lately; in a 2022 Wall Street Journal interview he called himself a “religious person” who reads the scriptures, meditates and prays. He played Milan on Monday and takes the stage in Rome on Thursday. At his last show before the Vatican visit, he sang his 1997 song “Tryin' to Get to Heaven,” which includes the line: “I've been all around the world, boys/Now I'm trying to get to heaven before they close the door.”