THE Vatican News shared an official snap of the extraordinary meet-up between rock legend Bob Dylan (real name Robert Allen Zimmerman), who was wearing his trademark black hoodie, and Pope Leo XIV in his immaculate white.
It was really a private audience between the religious leader of the world’s largest church and the iconic singer-songwriter.
The 85-year-old ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ hit-maker is currently touring across Europe and the United Kingdom on his 2026 Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour and between his shows in Milan and Rome, the star found time to stop at the Vatican to visit the first American Pope.
Dylan—a Nobel laureate in literature—was well received at the Apostolic Palace by the pope. The Vatican’s official outlet described the meeting as “brief, consisting of greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges.”The two also swapped gifts, with Leo presenting Dylan with a rosary and Dylan, in turn, giving the pontiff, erstwhile Chicago-born Robert Prevost, a copy of his autobiography ‘Chronicles: Volume One’, which was originally released in 2004.
The pontiff had previously featured lyrics from Dylan’s hit ‘Go Away You Bomb’ in the preface to a book on disarmament last July.
Leo had quoted in his book ‘Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift’, published by the Vatican Publishing House (LEV), words from one of the singer’s poetic compositions (figuratively addressed to the atomic bomb) to issue a stern warning against global rearmament and the nightmare of nuclear weapons.
“I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an’ man-handled,” the quote relayed.
The 85-year-old Dylan is in Rome to perform at the Palazzo dello Sport as part of the autumn leg of his ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ tour—a concert series that also includes stops in Milan and Bologna, and is notable for its strict prohibition on smartphone recording.
This is not the first time that the ‘minstrel of rock’, a nickname he has held since the beginning of his career in the 1960s, has met a Pope.
In 1997, Dylan was invited to perform alongside other artists at the 23rd National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, before the Pope—then John Paul II—and a crowd of approximately 300,000 young people.
The collective memory in the performance retains the image of the singer who, after performing three of his great classics—including ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’—removed his cowboy hat, climbed the steps to the papal stage, and exchanged a handshake and a few brief words with Pope John Paul.
In his address to the young people at the event, John Paul explicitly quoted the lyrics to ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’: “You ask me: how many roads must a man walk down / before you can call him a man?”
The Polish pontiff answered this question by saying: “Only one. There is only one road for man, and that is the road of Jesus Christ.”
