“Knocking on Heaven’s Door”: in 1997, Bob Dylan sang Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door in front of John Paul II. Almost thirty years later, the legendary American singer-songwriter returned to the Vatican, this time to meet Pope Leo XIV. The encounter intertwines music, spirituality, and a lifelong commitment to peace, reflecting an artist whose influence has spanned generations and even inspired papal speeches.
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The 85-year-old musician, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was received on Wednesday afternoon in the Apostolic Palace. The meeting was shared on social media by Father Antonio Spadaro, who accompanied Dylan, alongside Andrea Monda, the editor of L’Osservatore Romano.
“Today I accompanied Bob Dylan to see Pope Leo. Not without the emotion of experiencing a meeting that has the flavour of history and the feeling that, at every step in the Apostolic Palace, anything could have happened!”, wrote Spadaro, who posted two photographs of the singer alongside the Pope.
Wearing a black sweatshirt with his hood pulled over his head: in Rome for a stop on his tour (on Thursday evening he will take the stage at the Palazzo dello Sport), Dylan remains true to his enigmatic persona, staging an encounter that brings together two iconic figures from very different worlds.
The audience was brief, marked by warm greetings and a few exchanges. Pope Leo XIV presented the musician with a rosary, while Dylan responded with a copy of his autobiography, Chronicles – Volume 1.
Bob Dylan and Pope Leo: The Common Thread of Peace and Music
The meeting did not happen by chance. Last July, the Pope had actually quoted Dylan in the preface to a book published by the Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, titled Disarmata e disarmante. La pace è un dono, edited by journalist Alessandro Banfi.
The words he chose were from Go Away You Bomb (Vai via, bomba), a protest lyric written by the musician in 1963 at the height of the Cold War: “I hate you because man made you and man owns you and man handles you”.
A composition against the nuclear threat, it remained out of the spotlight for a long time, as the song was never officially recorded or released on Dylan’s albums. The original manuscript was only discovered in 2013. Pope Leo XIV used these lyrics to issue a warning against rearmament and the risk of a new nuclear escalation.
Dylan rose to fame in the 1960s with iconic songs such as Masters of War and Blowin’ in the Wind, which became anthems for anti-war protests and the civil rights movement. However, his stance has always been more nuanced than that of an absolute pacifist; in 2001, he stated he did not consider himself a pacifist and defended the right to self-defense.
From John Paul II to Leo XIV: Dylan’s Previous Papal Encounters
This is not the first time Dylan has met a Pope. In 1997, the singer-songwriter participated in the National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, performing in front of John Paul II and approximately 300,000 young people.
After performing three songs, including Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, Dylan took off his cowboy hat, climbed the steps of the papal stage, and shook Karol Wojtyla’s hand.
On that occasion, too, music served as a bridge between the rock world and the Church. In his address to the youth, John Paul II quoted Blowin’ in the Wind, one of the musician’s masterpieces: “You ask me: how many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?”.
The Polish Pope offered his own interpretation: “Only one. There is only one road for man, and it is that of Jesus Christ.”
Bob Dylan’s Faith: Between Conversion and Gospel Songs
Spirituality is another central dimension of his career. Raised in a Jewish family, Dylan underwent a profound religious transformation in the late 1970s, following a spiritual experience that drew him closer to Christianity.
In 1979, he released Slow Train Coming, followed by Saved and Shot of Love: three albums in which Christian faith and gospel language openly entered his music. In the subsequent years, he returned to a more varied repertoire, though he never entirely abandoned religious references.
In a more recent interview, Dylan reiterated that he is a deeply religious person, noting that he often reads the Scriptures, meditates, and prays.
Pope Leo XIV and Music: “Singing Belongs to Those Who Love”
For Pope Leo XIV, music is far more than a simple accompaniment to prayer. In the first year of his pontificate, the Pope has repeatedly emphasized its communicative and spiritual power: we have heard him sing the Regina Caeli and the Pater Noster in Latin, and watched with deep involvement the performances of the communities he has met during his travels.
At the Jubilee for choirs and choral groups in November 2025, Leo described music as a gift of great civilizations, capable of expressing what we carry deep in our hearts. Singing, he explained, unites mind, feelings, body, and soul. Quoting Saint Augustine, he recalled: “Cantare amantis est”, that is, “singing is characteristic of one who loves”.