Pope receives Bob Dylan at the Vatican

Dylan meets Pope Leo - Image Vatican Media

Source: Vatican Media

In July this year, Pope Leo quoted Bob Dylan, in the preface to his book 'Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift'. He quoted from one of Dylan's lyrics (figuratively addressed to the atomic bomb) to issue a stern warning against global rearmament and the nightmare of nuclear weapons: 'I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an' man-handled.'

Today, in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, Pope Leo XIV met in person with the 85-year-old American singer-songwriter, poet, and Nobel Prize laureate in literature.

Tomorrow, Thursday, November 5, Dylan will perform at the Palazzo dello Sport in Rome as part of the autumn leg of his 'Rough and Rowdy Ways' tour - a concert series that also includes stops in Milan and Bologna, and is notable for its strict prohibition on smartphone recording.

The meeting between Pope Leo and Bob Dylan - who wore a black hooded sweatshirt - was brief, consisting of greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges. The Holy Father presented the singer with a rosary. Dylan reciprocated with a book: Chronicles: Volume One, his autobiography, which has been published in the United States and other countries around the world.

The verses cited by the Pope in the book published by the Vatican Publishing House (LEV), edited by journalist Alessandro Banfi, come from 'Go Away You Bomb', a protest song written by the artist in 1963, at the height of Cold War tensions. It is a unique piece, given that the song was never officially recorded or released on any music album, and the original manuscript remained unpublished until its discovery in 2013.

This is not the first time that the 'minstrel of rock' has met a Pope. In 1997, Dylan was invited to perform alongside other artists at the 23rd National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, before (the now Saint) Pope John Paul II - and a crowd of approximately 300,000 young people. After performing three of his great classics- including 'Knockin' on Heaven's Door' - Dylan removed his cowboy hat, climbed the steps to the papal stage, and exchanged a handshake and a few brief words with Pope John Paul II.

In his address to the young people at that event, the Pope quoted the lyrics to 'Blowin' in the Wind': "You ask me: how many roads must a man walk down / before you can call him a man?" The Polish Pope answered this question by saying: "Only one. There is only one road for man, and that is the road of Jesus Christ."