ROME — Pope Leo XIV hosted Bob Dylan at his official residence, the Apostolic Palace, on Wednesday during the Rome stop on the singer-songwriter’s Italian tour.Dylan, 85, wore a nearly all-black outfit, including a pulled-up hoodie, gloves and an umbrella, starkly contrasting with the Chicago-born Pope’s all-white vestments.The meeting between the pair, who both hail from the US Midwest, was brief, according to Vatican News.The meeting was brokered by Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official known for building bridges between the church and wider culture. Spadaro earlier this year arranged a meeting between Pope 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 platforms.Leo presented the Nobel laureate with a rosary and Dylan gifted Leo a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One.The 71-year-old Chicago-born pontiff knows Dylan’s repertoire. He quoted an unpublished 1963 Dylan Song, “Go Away You Bomb” in the preface to a book-length collection of his addresses and reflections, titled “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift”, published in July. “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an’ man-handled,” was the line quoted in the book’s warning to the world against rearmament.The 1963 song was an anti-nuclear protest, while Pope Leo has been a critic of the war in Iran and emphasized the Catholic Church’s opposition to nuclear weapons.The song was written in 1963 amid the Cold War, but was never recorded. The typewritten lyrics were unpublished until 2013 when they were discovered and put up for auction, according to the New York Times.The visit happened ahead of Dylan’s scheduled performance on Thursday at the Palazzo dello Sport, one of several Italian stops on his Rough and Rowdy Ways tour.It was the second time Dylan had met a pope. In 1997 Dylan was invited to perform in front of Pope John Paul II and about 300,000 young people for the 23rd National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna.Dylan played four songs including Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, and reportedly climbed the stage mid-set to greet John Paul with a handshake and exchange a few words.The then-Pope quoted Dylan’s hit Blowin’ in the Wind in his sermon to the crowd.No exact explanation was given for how the meeting with Pope Leo — who was only a boy when Dylan’s first album was released — came about. Dylan has had an unusual spiritual journey over the course of his life. Born Jewish, he later became deeply Christian.“I’m a religious person,” he said in a Wall Street Journal interview posted on his website. “I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.”Leo has had his share of celebrity encounters. Earlier this year, he met with the musician Bad Bunny in Spain. And Father Spadaro, Reuters reported, also helped to set up a meeting between Pope Leo and the singer, poet and author Patti Smith this year.
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