Pope Leo XIV Welcomes Bob Dylan at the Apostolic Palace
Dylan gave the pope his autobiography; the pope gave him a rosary. The brief private audience preceded Dylan’s Rome concert.
On Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026, Pope Leo XIV received Bob Dylan in a private audience at the Apostolic Palace.
The Holy Father presented the 85-year-old singer with a rosary. Dylan, wearing a black hooded jacket, offered the Pope a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. The Holy See said the two “were exchanging jokes,” without further detail on their conversation. The encounter was brief, limited to greetings and a few pleasant words.
The meeting was organized by Jesuit Fr. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education.
Tour Stop and Earlier Papal Link
Dylan was in Rome for a concert at the Palazzo dello Sport on Thursday, Nov. 5, part of his "Rough and Rowdy Ways" tour, which also includes dates in Milan and Bologna.
The audience follows Pope Leo XIV’s July 2026 citation of Dylan in an unpublished text included in the book Unarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, issued by the Vatican Publishing House—the first anthology of the Pope’s statements on peace since his election on May 8, 2025. Denouncing the arms race as something that “frightens and terrifies us today,” the Pope quoted Dylan’s 1963 song “Go Away You Bomb”: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned an’ man-handled.”
Dylan’s only previous meeting with a pope came on Sept. 27, 1997, when he performed at the 23rd National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna before St. John Paul II and some 300,000 young people. He sang “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and did not perform “Blowin’ in the Wind.” In his address, John Paul II took up Dylan’s question: “You have asked me: ‘How many paths must a man travel to be able to recognize himself as a man?’ I answer you: one. There is only one path for man; it is Christ, who said: ‘I am the way’ (Jn 14:6).”
The Nov. 4 audience thus renews a decades-long thread between the American songwriter and the See of Peter, this time in a private setting rather than before a vast outdoor crowd.