Bob Dylan’s current European run has been marked by a number of surprises. He’s busted out a handful of tunes for the first time in years, ranging from the 1963 The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan favorite “Girl from the North Country” to the 2001 “Love and Theft” number “High Water (For Charley Patton),” swapped in Julian Lage for guitarist Mike Seal partway through the tour with explanation and even added some extra versus to “Tangled Up in Blue” when he revived that classic.
However, perhaps his most unexpected move came yesterday when Dylan met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican during a day off between gigs in Italy. Photos of the brief encounter show Dylan wearing a black hoody and seemingly using an umbrella as a walking stick. According to reports, the Pope gave Dylan a rosary while Dylan presented the Pope with a copy of his 2004 memoir Chronicles: Volume One.
The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, who helped arrange the meeting and also introduced the Pope to Patti Smith, and Vatican News editor Andrea Monda attended the meeting as well, though Dylan and the Pope were awarded time to speak in private.
The 71-year-old Pope was born in Chicago and quoted Dylan’s unpublished 1963 anti-nuclear weapon protest song, “Go Away You Bomb,” in his 2026 book, Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift. The 85-year-old Dylan, who came of age in Minnesota, has long been interested in religion, weaving various spiritual elements into his music from the beginning. His personal faith has also long been a subject of discussion. Though raised Jewish, he entered a born-again Christian phase in the late 1970s and released several gospel-inspired albums. He distanced himself from the movement in the 1980s and seemingly returned to his Jewish roots, participating in a Chabad telethon and dipping into High Holiday services while on tour. However, he has avoided directly addressing his current religious view in public: He performed “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” at an outdoor concert where Pope John Paul II was in attendance in 1997 and touched on region during a 2022 Wall Street Journal interview while, oddly enough, admitting to binge-watching Coronation Street, Father Brown and early Twilight Zone episodes. “I’m a religious person. I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church,” he said in the interview, though his exact tone was not clear given the context. “I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.”
Dylan will perform at Rome, Italy’s Palazzo dello Sport this evening.
