Bob Dylan Has Audience With Pope
Sandra Rhodes · Nov 4, 2026 · 1 min read
Legendary singer Bob Dylan met with Pope Leo XIV Wednesday at the Vatican during a break between concert dates in Italy.
According to the Vatican, the encounter was brief, with Leo giving Dylan a rosary as Dylan gave the pope a copy of his autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume One.”
Leo quoted from an unpublished protest song Dylan penned in 1963, “Go Away You Bomb,” in his 2026 book “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift.”
Leo was warning against the race to rearm and the recourse to nuclear weapons and quoted the lyric, addressed to a hypothetical atomic bomb: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an’ man-handled.”
Two Vatican officials accompanied Dylan — the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican culture ministry official, and Andrea Monda, the editor of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Spadaro said Dylan had wanted to speak with Leo; the two met in private for a few minutes.
In an essay in L'Osservatore Romano, he recalled that the former Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago in 1955, grew up familiar with Dylan's music.
Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, wore a black hoodie with the hoodie over his head and a loose tie.
Dylan played for Pope John Paul II in 1997 during a concert capping a religious congress in Bologna, Italy.
Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, was raised in a Jewish family in Minnesota. He became a born-again Christian in 1979 and alienated some of his longtime fans with songs like “Gotta Serve Somebody” and “Saved.”