Bob Dylan meets Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican during Italian tour
Bob Dylan visited Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican, exchanging a rosary and a copy of his autobiography, while the pope cited an unpublished 1963 protest song in his recent book.
Bob Dylan stopped at the Vatican on Wednesday while on a break between concert dates in Italy and met privately with Pope Leo XIV. The brief encounter included the pope giving Dylan a rosary and Dylan presenting the pope with a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One.
Leo XIV referenced an unpublished 1963 protest song Dylan wrote, “Go Away You Bomb,” in his 2026 book Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, warning against nuclear rearmament. The lyric quoted addressed a hypothetical atomic bomb: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an’ man-handled.”
Two Vatican officials accompanied Dylan: Rev. Antonio Spadaro of the Vatican culture ministry and Andrea Monda, editor of L’Osservatore Romano. > "Dylan wanted to speak with Leo, and the two met in private for a few minutes," Spadaro said.
Spadaro noted that Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman in Chicago in 1955, has long been familiar with the works of St. Augustine, a figure central to Leo XIV’s spirituality. Dylan previously referenced St. Augustine in the 1967 song “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine.”
The Nobel laureate in literature, who won the prize in 2016, wore a black hoodie and a loose tie during the meeting, with Vatican photos showing the hood over his head. This was not Dylan’s first papal audience; he performed for Pope John Paul II in 1997 at a religious congress in Bologna.
Dylan, who converted to Christianity in 1979, has described himself in recent interviews as a “religious person” who reads Scripture, meditates and prays. He was in Milan for a concert on Monday and is scheduled to perform in Rome on Thursday, having recently sung the 1997 song “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven.”