News / Published 2026-11-05

Bob Dylan Meets Pope Leo XIV in a Private Audience

Pope Leo XIV met Bob Dylan at the Vatican on Wednesday, Nov. 4, in a private audience, Billboard reports. Billboard says the Catholic headquarters revealed the meeting by sharing a photo on Instagram of the two shaking hands, and it quotes the caption the post carried, which described a private audience with the American singer-songwriter that day.

(See the reader poll and source context below).

Bob Dylan met Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Nov. 4, a meeting both papers call brief; Billboard has the Instagram photos and the Rome concert, Rolling Stone has the 1963 song the pope quoted.

A flat vector illustration of a wide audio waveform of vertical bars across a dark burgundy ground with warm gold highlights on some bars and a soft glow behind the centre, with the words "A private audience at the Vatican" in the lower-left corner.
Conceptual editorial illustration; not a photograph of the people or event described.

What do the sources establish?

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Bob Dylan Meets With Pope Leo XIV in a Private Audience — Rolling StoneReported context: [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object] [object Object]Not recordedNot recorded

THE SHORT VERSION

  • Bob Dylan met Pope Leo XIV in a private audience at the Vatican on Wednesday, Nov. 4, a meeting both Billboard and Rolling Stone describe as brief and source to Vatican News.
  • Billboard reports that the Vatican announced the meeting with an Instagram photo of the two shaking hands and that the pope apparently gave Dylan a rosary while Dylan gave him a copy of Chronicles: Volume One.
  • Rolling Stone carries what the other paper does not: the pope's citation of Dylan's unpublished 1963 protest song "Go Away You Bomb" in his book, and the earlier audiences he held with Bad Bunny and Patti Smith.

A Private Audience on November 4

Pope Leo XIV met Bob Dylan at the Vatican on Wednesday, Nov. 4, in a private audience, Billboard reports. Billboard says the Catholic headquarters revealed the meeting by sharing a photo on Instagram of the two shaking hands, and it quotes the caption the post carried, which described a private audience with the American singer-songwriter that day. The item also describes the frame: the pope in his usual white robes, Dylan in a hooded black zip-up under a jacket.

Rolling Stone confirms the audience and the day and opens somewhere else, with the pope's record of making time for revered musicians over the past year, Patti Smith and Bad Bunny among them. Neither paper says where inside the Vatican the meeting took place, how long it ran beyond the word brief, or who else was in the room. Both attribute the description of the encounter to Vatican News rather than to their own reporting.

What the Vatican Posted

Billboard is the only one of the two that describes the images. Beyond the handshake, it reports other snaps showing the two men in conversation while sitting together at a table, posing together in front of a piece of artwork, and standing and talking as Dylan leans against an umbrella. It reads the handshake frame closely, with the pope smiling warmly and Dylan looking at the Bishop of Rome intently.

Rolling Stone describes no photograph and does not mention the Instagram post at all. It carries one Instagram quotation, and it belongs to Patti Smith, about her own meeting with the pope in August. So the pictures are one paper's material, and the other's only Instagram line comes from a different meeting three months earlier.

A Rosary and a Memoir

Both papers report an exchange of gifts and both credit Vatican News. Billboard says the pope apparently gifted Dylan a rosary, while the musician returned the favor by giving him a copy of his Chronicles: Volume One memoir. Rolling Stone says the pair exchanged gifts: the pope presented Dylan a rosary and Dylan gave the pope his autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One.

The difference is in the verb and in the hedge. Billboard writes apparently, which leaves the giver slightly open; Rolling Stone writes presented, with no qualifier, and calls the book an autobiography where the other calls it a memoir. Neither paper quotes either man about the exchange and neither describes the rosary. What both take from Vatican News is the shape of the meeting, and there their wording splits as well: one prints brief inside a single quoted phrase, the other quotes brief on its own and the greetings in a second fragment.

A Protest Song in the Pope's Book

Rolling Stone's story rests on a document. It reports that the pope quoted Dylan's unpublished 1963 protest song “Go Away You Bomb” in his book, Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, and it prints the line he used: “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned an’ man-handled”. The lyrics, typewritten and then corrected by hand, were auctioned by Christie's in the summer of 2013, the paper says.

The same story gives the song's origin through an interview Rolling Stone conducted in 2013 with Izzy Young of the Greenwich Village Folklore Center, who said he asked everyone he knew to write a song about the nuclear bomb and that Dylan came in literally the next day and handed it to him. Billboard's report contains no reference to the book, the song or the auction. That is the widest gap between the two accounts: one is a photo call, the other is a reading of the pope's prose.

Bad Bunny, Patti Smith, a Pattern

Only Rolling Stone sets the audience in a series. It reports that the pope met Bad Bunny and others in June while both were touring Spain, and quotes him on the singer's pull, acknowledging that if people were asked whether they wanted to see Bad Bunny or the pope, many would see Bad Bunny. It also reports that Patti Smith, a fellow Chicagoan, met him in August, and carries her Instagram line about the moment.

The same paper adds two further entries to the pope's record. It says his first encyclical, Magnifca Humanitas, addressed human dignity in a time of troubling artificial intelligence and referenced figures from Picasso to Tolkien's Gandalf to Schindler's List, and that he submitted his mail-in ballot in Chicago ahead of the midterms, becoming the first pope to vote in a U.S. general election. Billboard carries the ballot too and adds a result Rolling Stone leaves out.

A Concert the Next Day

Billboard carries the reason Dylan was in Rome. It reports that the meeting came one day ahead of a planned performance at the Palazzo dello Sport, the latest stop on his Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour, and notes that he has charted 81 entries on the Billboard 200 and topped the tally five times. It also calls him a 10-time Grammy winner. Rolling Stone gives none of those numbers and never mentions the concert.

Billboard adds the frame around the pope as well: he took the church's top job in May last year after the death of Pope Francis, becoming the first American-born cardinal to do so. Neither paper says whether the two discussed music, the 1963 song or the tour, and neither reports a second meeting or any plan for one. Related coverage on this site includes Noah Kahan's 2027 tour, the Chicks postponing a Los Angeles date and a posthumous Shane MacGowan cover.

Sources & reporting limits

  1. Bob Dylan Meets Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican — Billboard
  2. Bob Dylan Meets With Pope Leo XIV in a Private Audience — Rolling Stone
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