Bob Dylan came knockin’ on Pope Leo XIV’ s door Wednesday, as the American singer-songwriter and poet visited with the American pope at the Vatican during a break between concert dates in Italy.
In an essay in L’Osservatore Romano, he recalled that the former Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago in 1955, grew up familiar with Dylan’s music. Augustine” for the 1967 album John Wesley Harding. It wasn’t Dylan’s first papal encounter: He played for Pope John Paul II, and thousands of other people, in 1997 during a concert capping a religious congress in Bologna, Italy.
He also noted that Dylan was very familiar with St. Augustine of Hippo, the inspiration of Leo’s spirituality and Augustinian religious order, penning “I Dreamed I Saw St. In more recent years, Dylan has been more circumspect about his religious beliefs. Dylan met with Leo in between concert dates in Italy.
The Vatican said the encounter was brief, with Leo giving Dylan a rosary and Dylan presenting the pope with a copy of his autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume One. Leo had quoted from an unpublished protest song Dylan penned in 1963, “Go Away You Bomb,” in his 2026 book “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift. Spadaro said Dylan had wanted to speak with Leo, and the two met in private for a few minutes. In a 2022 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Dylan said that he was a “religious person” who reads the scriptures, meditates and prays. In his most recent concert before the meeting with the pope, Dylan sang his 1997 song “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” that contains the lyric, “I’ve been all around the world, boys/Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door.”
He played in Milan on Monday and is playing Rome on Thursday.
