“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 American singer songwriter is back in the Vatican, this time to meet Pope Leo XIV. It is an encounter that intertwines music, spirituality and a commitment to peace, centred on an artist who has spanned generations and has even inspired Popes’ speeches.
The musician, 85, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, was received on Wednesday afternoon in the Apostolic Palace. The meeting was described on social media by Father Antonio Spadaro, who accompanied Dylan together with Andrea Monda, 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, posting two photographs of the singer next to the Pope.
Black sweatshirt, hood pulled over his head: in Rome for a stop on his tour (on Thursday evening he will take to the stage at the Palazzo dello Sport), Dylan stays true to his persona and stages an encounter that brings together two icons, even if they belong to very different worlds.
The audience was brief, with greetings and a few exchanges. Leo XIV gave the musician a rosary, while Dylan responded with a copy of Chronicles – Volume 1, his autobiography.
Bob Dylan and Pope Leo, the common thread of peace and music
The meeting did not come out of nowhere. Last July the Pope had in fact quoted Dylan in the preface to the book from the Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Disarmata e disarmante. La pace è un dono, edited by journalist Alessandro Banfi.
The words he chose were those of 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 stayed out of the spotlight for a long time: the song has never been recorded or officially released on Dylan’s albums. The original manuscript was only found in 2013. Leo XIV used it to issue a warning against rearmament and the risk of a new nuclear escalation.
Dylan became famous in the 1960s also thanks to songs such as Masters of War and Blowin’ in the Wind, associated with anti-war protests and the struggle for civil rights. His position, however, is more nuanced than that of an absolute pacifist: in 2001 he said he did not consider himself a pacifist and defended the right to self-defence.
From John Paul II to Leo XIV: Dylan has met a Pope before
This is not the first time Dylan has appeared before a Pope. In 1997 the singer songwriter took part in the National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, where he performed in front of John Paul II and around 300,000 young people.
After playing 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 acted as a bridge between the world of rock and that of the Church. In his address to young people, 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 replied with 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 went through a profound religious turning point at the end of the 1970s, after recounting a spiritual experience that led him to draw closer to Christianity.
In 1979 he released Slow Train Coming, followed by Saved and Shot of Love: three albums in which Christian faith and the language of gospel openly entered his music. In the following years he returned to a more varied repertoire, without abandoning religious references.
In a more recent interview Dylan reiterated that he is a religious person, that he often reads the Scriptures, meditates and prays.
Leo XIV and music: “Singing belongs to those who love”
For Leo XIV too, music is much more than an accompaniment to prayer. In the first year of his pontificate the Pope has repeatedly emphasised its communicative and spiritual power: we have heard him sing the Regina Caeli and the Pater Noster in Latin, and watch with deep involvement the songs 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 the great civilisations, capable of expressing what we carry deep in our hearts. Singing, he explained, brings together mind, feelings, body and soul. And quoting Saint Augustine he recalled: “Cantare amantis est”, that is, “singing is characteristic of one who loves”.