Bob Dylan visited Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Wednesday, meeting with the pontiff between concert dates in Italy.

The Vatican stated that the encounter was brief. Pope Leo XIV presented Dylan with a rosary, and Dylan gave the pope a copy of his autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume One.”

In 2026, Pope Leo XIV quoted from an unpublished Dylan protest song from 1963, “Go Away You Bomb,” in his book “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift.” The lyric, addressed to a hypothetical atomic bomb, read: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an’ man-handled.” Pope Leo XIV used the quote to warn against nuclear weapons and the arms race.

Dylan was accompanied by two Vatican officials: the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, who works for the Vatican's culture ministry, and Andrea Monda, editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. Spadaro noted that Dylan had expressed a desire to meet the pope. In an essay for L'Osservatore Romano, Spadaro, who grew up with Dylan's music, recalled that the pontiff, born Robert Prevost in Chicago, was familiar with the singer-songwriter's work. Spadaro also mentioned Dylan's familiarity with St. Augustine of Hippo, the inspiration for Pope Leo XIV's spirituality and religious order. Dylan wrote the song “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine” in 1967.

Dylan, a Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, wore a black hoodie and a loose tie for the meeting. Photos from the Vatican showed him with his hood up.

This was not Dylan's first papal encounter. He performed for Pope John Paul II in 1997 at a concert in Bologna, Italy.

Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman to a Jewish family in Minnesota, converted to Christianity in 1979. In a 2022 interview with The Wall Street Journal, Dylan described himself as a religious person who reads scriptures, meditates, and prays.

Dylan performed in Milan on Monday and was scheduled to play in Rome on Thursday. Before his Vatican meeting, Dylan sang his 1997 song “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” which includes the lyric, “I’ve been all around the world, boys/Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door.”