Bob Dylan meets Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, with music, faith, and a rosary gift
Photo: Courtesy Vatican News.
Bob Dylan meets Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican. The Pontiff presents him with a rosary; the Nobel laureate presents him with his autobiography. Tomorrow, the concert in Rome.
"Knocking on Heaven's Door": in 1997, Bob Dylan performed Knockin' on Heaven's Door before John Paul II. Nearly three decades later, the American singer-songwriter has returned to the Vatican, this time to meet Pope Leo XIV. It is a meeting that blends music, spirituality, and a commitment to peace, centered on an artist who has spanned generations and even inspired the speeches of Popes.
The musician, 85, a Nobel Prize in Literature winner, was received on Wednesday afternoon at the Apostolic Palace. The encounter was described on social media by Father Antonio Spadaro, who accompanied Dylan along with Andrea Monda, editor of L'Osservatore Romano.
"Today (Wednesday) I accompanied Bob Dylan to see Pope Leo. Not without the emotion of experiencing a meeting that has the flavor of history and the feeling that, at every step in the Apostolic Palace, anything could have happened!" wrote Spadaro, posting two photographs of the singer beside the Pope.
Black sweatshirt, hood pulled over his head: in Rome for a stop on his tour (on Thursday evening he will take the stage at the Palazzo dello Sport), Dylan remains true to his persona and stages an encounter that brings together two icons, even if they belong to very different worlds.
Bob Dylan and Pope Leo: a shared thread of peace and music
The meeting was not without precedent. The previous July, the Pope had in fact quoted Dylan in the foreword to a book from the Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Disarmata e disarmante. La pace è un dono, edited by journalist Alessandro Banfi.
The lines he selected were from Go Away You Bomb, a protest lyric the musician wrote in 1963, at the height of the Cold War: "I hate you because man made you and man owns you and man handles you".
A composition against the nuclear threat, it remained out of the spotlight for a long time: the song was never recorded or officially released on Dylan's albums. The original manuscript was only discovered in 2013. Leo XIV drew on it to issue a warning against rearmament and the danger of a fresh nuclear escalation.
Dylan rose to fame in the 1960s also through songs such as Masters of War and Blowin' in the Wind, tied to anti-war protests and the struggle for civil rights. His stance, however, is more nuanced than that of an absolute pacifist: in 2001 he stated that he did not regard himself as a pacifist and defended the right to self-defence.
From John Paul II to Leo XIV: Dylan has met a Pope before
This is not the first occasion on which Dylan has appeared before a Pope. In 1997 the singer-songwriter took part in the National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, where he performed before John Paul II and roughly 300,000 young people.
After playing three songs, including Knockin' on Heaven's Door, Dylan removed his cowboy hat, ascended the steps of the papal stage and shook Karol Wojtyla's hand.
On that occasion too, music served as a bridge between the world of rock and that of the Church. In his address to the young people, John Paul II quoted Blowin' in the Wind, one of the musician's masterpieces: "You ask me: how many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?".
The Polish Pope answered with his own reading: "Only one. There is only one road for man, and it is that of Jesus Christ".
Bob Dylan's faith, between conversion and gospel songs
Spirituality is another key dimension of his career. Brought up in a Jewish family, Dylan underwent a profound religious turning point at the close of the 1970s, after describing a spiritual experience that drew him closer to Christianity.
In 1979 he released Slow Train Coming, followed by Saved and Shot of Love: three albums in which Christian faith and the language of gospel openly entered his music. In the years that followed he returned to a more varied repertoire, without abandoning religious references.
In a more recent interview Dylan reiterated that he is a religious person, that he often reads the Scriptures, meditates and prays.
Leo XIV and music: "Singing belongs to those who love"
For Leo XIV too, music is far more than an accompaniment to prayer. In the first year of his pontificate the Pope has repeatedly stressed its communicative and spiritual power: we have heard him sing the Regina Caeli and the Pater Noster in Latin, and watch with deep involvement the songs of the communities he has met during his travels.
At the Jubilee for choirs and choral groups, in November 2025, Leo described music as a gift of the great civilisations, capable of expressing what we carry deep in our hearts. Singing, he explained, brings together mind, feelings, body and soul. And quoting Saint Augustine he recalled: "Cantare amantis est", that is, "singing is characteristic of one who loves".
(Source: Euro News)
