Reported by NPR World
Pope Leo XIV, left, and the singer and Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan, right, pose for a photo during a meeting in the Vatican on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. Vatican Media/LaPresse/via AP hide caption
VATICAN CITY — Bob Dylan came knockin' on Pope Leo XIV' s door Wednesday, as the American singer-songwriter and poet visited with the American pope at the Vatican during a break between concert dates in Italy.
The Vatican said the encounter was brief, with Leo giving Dylan a rosary and Dylan presenting the pope with a copy of his autobiography, "Chronicles: Volume One."
More from the original report
Leo had quoted from an unpublished protest song Dylan penned in 1963, "Go Away You Bomb," in his 2026 book "Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift."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 who also accompanied Patti Smith to a July audience with Leo; and Andrea Monda, the editor of the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.
Pope Leo XIV, right, and the singer and Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan, left, talk during a meeting in the Vatican on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. Vatican Media/LaPresse/via AP hide caption
Spadaro said Dylan had wanted to speak with Leo, and 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.
He also noted that Dylan was very familiar with St. Augustine of Hippo, the inspiration of Leo's spirituality and Augustinian religious order, penning "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine" for the 1967 album John Wesley Harding.
Pope Leo XIV, right, and the singer and Nobel prize winner Bob Dylan, left, shake hands during a meeting in the Vatican on Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2026. Vatican Media/LaPresse/via AP hide caption
Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, wore a…