Bob Dylan Presents Autobiography to Pope Leo XIV During Italian Tour

Bob Dylan met with Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Wednesday to exchange gifts during a pause in his European concert schedule.

The American singer-songwriter presented the pope with a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One. In return, Leo XIV gave Dylan a rosary. The Vatican described the meeting as brief and private.

Dylan arrived in the Vatican between two scheduled performances in Italy. He played a concert in Milan on Monday. He is scheduled to perform in Rome on Thursday. Two Vatican officials accompanied the musician to the meeting: the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a culture ministry official, and Andrea Monda, editor of L’Osservatore Romano.

Spadaro stated that Dylan had requested to speak with the pope. The two men met in private for a few minutes. Spadaro noted that Leo, born Robert Prevost in Chicago in 1955, grew up familiar with Dylan’s music. Spadaro also highlighted Dylan’s connection to St. Augustine, the inspiration behind Leo’s Augustinian religious order.

The musical link between the two figures extends to Dylan’s 1967 album John Wesley Harding, which includes the song “I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine.” Leo quoted a Dylan lyric in his 2026 book Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift. The line, from an unpublished 1963 protest song titled “Go Away You Bomb,” reads: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an’ man-handled.” Leo used the verse to warn against the race to rearm and the use of nuclear weapons.

Dylan, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016, wore a black hoodie and a loose tie for the occasion. Vatican photographs showed him with the hood pulled over his head. This is not his first papal encounter. He performed for Pope John Paul II in 1997 during a concert in Bologna, Italy, that capped a religious congress.

The musician, born Robert Zimmerman to a Jewish family in Minnesota, became a born-again Christian in 1979. He has since been more circumspect about his faith. In a 2022 interview with The Wall Street Journal, he described himself as a religious person who reads scriptures, meditates, and prays. At his Milan concert on Monday, Dylan sang “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” a 1997 song that includes the lyric “Now I’m trying to get to heaven before they close the door.”