Bob Dylan visits Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican

BarcelonaPope Leo XIV and musician Bob Dylan met at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican this Wednesday, taking advantage of the fact that the musician is touring Europe and performing on November 5th in Rome and on the 7th in Bologna. Dylan arrived dressed in black, wearing gloves and a hood. Despite the chromatic contrast, the two shook hands and conversed in a friendly manner.

The Undersecretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, Antonio Spadaro, explained on social media that he personally accompanied Dylan before the pontiff. "Not without the emotion of living an encounter that has the scent of history and the feeling that, at every step in the Apostolic Palace, anything could have happened," wrote Spadaro.

Leo XIV is no stranger to the cultural legacy of the Nobel Prize for Literature winner. As the Efe agency explains, the Holy Father quoted Dylan in the prologue of the book Disarmed and disarming. Peace is a gift, to warn of the risks of rearmament and the use of nuclear energy for weaponry. He used a verse from the song Go away you bomb: "I hate you cause yer man made and man owned an' man handled" (I hate you because you were created by man, and man possesses you and manipulates you). In July, Leo XIV had already met with another American rock icon, Patti Smith.

It is not the first time that Bob Dylan has come face to face with a pope, as in 1997 he performed before John Paul II and hundreds of thousands of young people present at a Eucharistic congress in Bologna.