OMM Newsroom
Pope Leo XIV and musician Bob Dylan met at the Vatican on Wednesday, bringing together two well-known Americans from the Midwest. Leo’s birth name is Robert Prevost.
The pair met at the Apostolic Palace, the pope’s residence, according to CNN World. Leo wore his white cassock, while Dylan wore a black coat, black gloves and a black hoodie.
The meeting was arranged by Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official known for connecting the Church with wider culture. Earlier this year, Spadaro arranged a meeting between Leo and Patti Smith.
“It was hard not to feel the emotion of being part of an encounter that had a real sense of history about it, with the feeling that, at every step through the Apostolic Palace, absolutely anything could happen!” Spadaro wrote on social media.
The 71-year-old Chicago-born pope is familiar with Dylan’s music. In the preface to a book-length collection of his addresses and reflections, published in July, Leo quoted Dylan’s unpublished 1963 song “Go Away You Bomb”. The song was an anti-nuclear protest. Leo has criticised the war in Iran and stressed the Catholic Church’s opposition to nuclear weapons.
Leo is not the first pope to meet Dylan. At a church event attended by Pope John Paul II in Bologna, Italy, in 1997, Dylan performed several songs, including “Blowin’ in the Wind”, “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”.
Drawing on a famous line from “Blowin’ in the Wind”, John Paul II said: “You asked me: how many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? I answer you: one! There is only one road of man and it is Christ, who said: ‘I am the way’.”
The Vatican newspaper confirmed Wednesday’s meeting, saying the pope had “received in private audience Mr. Robert Allen Zimmerman”, Dylan’s birth name.
