rome —
They are two of the world’s most famous bobbers from the American Midwest. Now, Pope Leo XIV (real name Robert Prevost) and legendary musician Bob Dylan have met at the Vatican.
Leo and Dylan were spotted meeting on Wednesday at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, the residence of the Pope. The pope wore a white cassock, and Dylan wore a black coat, black gloves, and a black hoodie.
The meeting was mediated by the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official known for building bridges between the church and broader culture. Mr. Spadaro arranged a meeting between Pope Leo and Patti Smith earlier this year.
“With every step I took through the Apostolic Palace, I couldn’t help but feel that anything could happen and that I was part of a historic encounter,” Spadaro wrote on the social media platform.
Pope, 71, a Chicago native, knows Dylan’s repertoire well. He quoted the unreleased 1963 Dylan song “Go Away You Bomb” in the preface to a book of his speeches and reflections published in July. The 1963 song was an anti-nuclear protest, but Pope Leo has criticized the Iran war and emphasized the Catholic Church’s opposition to nuclear weapons.
But Leo isn’t the first pope Dylan meets. At a church event attended by Pope John Paul II in Bologna, Italy in 1997, Dylan performed songs such as “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and “Hard Rains a Gonna Fall.”
Pope John Paul II quoted the famous passage from “Blowin’ in the Wind” and said, “You asked me: How many paths must a man walk before he can be called a man? I answer, one! There is only one way of man, and that is Christ, who said, “I am the way.”
The meeting was confirmed by the Vatican newspaper, which reported that the pope, using Dylan’s birth name, “had a private audience with Mr. Robert Allen Zimmerman.”
