Pope Leo XIV meets Bob Dylan at the Vatican during singer's Italian tour

Bob Dylan met privately with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Wednesday, a short visit that fell between stops on the musician's concert tour of Italy, BBC News and the Associated Press reported. PBS NewsHour carried the AP's report.

According to both outlets, the Vatican characterized the visit as short. Leo handed Dylan a rosary, and in return Dylan offered the pontiff his 2004 memoir, "Chronicles: Volume One."

The AP said two Vatican figures escorted the singer. One was the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, who works in the Holy See's culture office. The other was Andrea Monda, who runs L'Osservatore Romano. According to the AP, Spadaro reported that the request to talk with Leo came from Dylan, and that the pair spent a few minutes alone together.

The BBC placed the meeting at the Apostolic Palace, where the pope officially resides. It described the 85-year-old Dylan in mostly black clothing, including gloves, an umbrella and a raised hood. The AP's account mentioned a black hoodie with a loose tie and said official Vatican photographs showed the hood covering his head.

The pope and the singer both come from the Midwest. In a piece for the Vatican paper, Spadaro wrote that Leo, who was born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, was raised hearing Dylan's songs, the AP reported. Spadaro also noted Dylan's knowledge of St. Augustine of Hippo, the figure behind Leo's Augustinian order, whom Dylan referenced in a 1967 song title.

Leo has drawn on Dylan's work in the past. Both outlets said the pope, in a 2026 volume called "Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift," cited a line from "Go Away You Bomb," an anti-nuclear song Dylan wrote in 1963 and never recorded, as part of a warning about rearmament. Citing the New York Times, the BBC said the typed lyrics were unknown to the public until they appeared at a 2013 auction.

Wednesday's visit marked Dylan's second encounter with a pontiff. In 1997, he played at a Catholic congress in Bologna attended by Pope John Paul II. The BBC estimated the crowd at roughly 300,000 young people and said Dylan performed four songs, among them "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," with John Paul later citing "Blowin' in the Wind" during his homily.

The AP noted that Dylan, originally named Robert Zimmerman, grew up Jewish in Minnesota and embraced born-again Christianity in 1979. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal in 2022, he described himself as a "religious person," the AP reported.

Dylan, the 2016 Nobel literature laureate, gave a concert in Milan on Monday. The BBC said his next show is set for Thursday at Rome's Palazzo dello Sport.

Compiled by True News from reporting by BBC News and PBS NewsHour. Each outlet's original story is linked below.

Originally published by True News: https://truenews.bagleyenterprises.net/stories/787