When the American bard met the American pope

[THE VATICAN, Rome] Everyone likes to quote Bob Dylan, even popes.

When the singer-songwriter met Pope John Paul II in 1997, the pontiff name-checked a lyric from the Dylan classic Blowin’ in the Wind.

Pope Leo XIV, it seems, may be more into the deep cut. Not long before he was elected to lead the Roman Catholic Church, he wrote a preface to a book on disarmament that quoted from a little-known 1963 Dylan protest song titled Go Away You Bomb.

On Wednesday (Nov 4), Dylan, 85, visited Leo, 71, at the Vatican and gave him a different book. Those familiar with the singer’s not-insubstantial self-esteem will be little surprised to learn that it was a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles Volume One.

In choosing his own gift for the singer, the Vatican said, Leo – like Dylan, an American – went for one perhaps equally unsurprising: a rosary.

Leo’s garb was also unsurprising: white papal vestments. Dylan wore a dark hooded sweatshirt, evoking a monk-like look – or a Star Wars character, according to the Internet. He also wore a vaguely knotted polka-dot tie.

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According to the Vatican, Leo met Dylan at the Apostolic Palace. The meeting, the Vatican said, “was brief, consisting of greetings and a few light-hearted exchanges”.

There was no music, unlike the time Dylan met John Paul II in Bologna, Italy, in 1997. Then, at a Eucharistic Congress, he performed three songs, among them – suitably enough – Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.

Then he shook the pope’s hand.

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Addressing the gathering, the Vatican recalled on Wednesday, John Paul riffed off a Dylan lyric: “You ask me: how many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man? Only one. There is only one road for man, and that is the road of Jesus Christ.”

The lyric Leo cited in his preface to the book Disarmed and Disarming, warning about nuclear disaster, was more sombre: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an’ man-handled.”

No exact explanation was given for how the meeting with the pope, who was only a boy when Dylan’s first album was released, came about. The singer was in Italy on tour. A Vatican official with ties to popular culture, Antonio Spadaro, was said to have played a role in the meeting.

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. This year, he met musician Bad Bunny in Spain. And Spadaro, Reuters reported, also helped to set up a meeting between Pope Leo and singer, poet and author Patti Smith this year. NYTIMES