Bob Dylan Meets Pope Leo XIV at Vatican in Brief Audience

Pope Leo XIV received Bob Dylan at a Vatican audience on Wednesday. The US folk singer wore a black hooded sweater to the meeting.

Dylan, 85, was born Robert Allen Zimmerman and is currently touring in Italy. According to a report on the official Vatican News website, the meeting was “brief, consisting of greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges.”

The pope gave Dylan a rosary, and the singer presented the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics with his autobiography, the report said.

Leo, the first US pope, has taken strongly anti-war positions. Vatican News reported that he quoted a Bob Dylan lyric in the preface to a book about disarmament published earlier this year, a commitment to peace that reflects the call to be peacemakers (Matthew 5:9). Leo, 71, has also clashed with US President Donald Trump following Trump’s criticism of the Middle East war.

Dylan and the pope have a earlier link. In 1997, Dylan sang at a prayer vigil for young people in Bologna, an event hosted by John Paul II.

Dylan, who released his first album in 1963, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2016.

Source: Read the original report