VATICAN CITY — Bob Dylan got a private audience with the first American pope on Wednesday, NPR and the Associated Press reported.
The Vatican said the meeting with Pope Leo XIV was brief. Leo gave the singer a rosary, and Dylan gave the pope a copy of his autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume One.”
The visit came during a break between Dylan’s concert dates in Italy. He played Milan on Monday and is scheduled to play Rome on Thursday.
Leo had quoted an unpublished 1963 Dylan protest song, “Go Away You Bomb,” in his 2026 book “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift,” in a passage warning against nuclear weapons, according to NPR.
The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican culture official who accompanied Dylan, said the singer had wanted to speak with Leo. Spadaro wrote that the pope, born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, grew up familiar with Dylan’s music.
Spadaro also noted that Dylan wrote “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” in 1967. St. Augustine inspired the Augustinian order Leo belongs to.
Vatican photos showed Dylan, the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, in a black hoodie with the hood up and a loose tie.
It was not his first brush with a pope. Dylan performed for Pope John Paul II at a 1997 concert in Bologna, Italy.
Sources: NPR/AP. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Jebulon / CC0 via Wikimedia Commons.
