Pope Leo XIV meets Bob Dylan at Vatican audience

Pope Leo XIV, born Robert Prevost, met with musician Bob Dylan, whose legal name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, inside the Vatican's Apostolic Palace on Wednesday. The meeting was organized by Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official who has previously facilitated cultural exchanges, including a prior meeting between the pope and Patti Smith.

"It was hard not to feel the emotion of being part of an encounter that had a real sense of history about it, with the feeling that, at every step through the Apostolic Palace, absolutely anything could happen," Spadaro wrote on social media.

The pope, dressed in his white cassock, and Dylan, wearing a black coat, gloves and hoodie, were photographed together during the audience. Pope Leo has referenced an unpublished 1963 Dylan song, "Go Away You Bomb," in the preface to a recent collection of his addresses, highlighting his opposition to nuclear weapons and the war in Iran.

Dylan is not the first pop culture figure he has met; in 1997, he performed for Pope John Paul II in Bologna, Italy, where the late pope responded to a lyric from "Blowin' in the Wind" with a theological comment. The Vatican newspaper confirmed the private audience, noting that the pope received Mr. Robert Allen Zimmerman.