Vatican City (AFP) – Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday received Bob Dylan in the Vatican at an audience for which the US folk music legend wore a black hooded sweater. The 85-year-old singer-songwriter, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, is currently in Italy on tour. A report on the official Vatican News website said the meeting was “brief, consisting of greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges”.
The pope gave Dylan a rosary and the singer gifted the leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics his autobiography, the report said. Leo, the first US pope, quoted a Bob Dylan lyric in the preface to a book about disarmament published earlier this year, according to Vatican News.
Leo, 71, has taken strongly anti-war positions and clashed with US President Donald Trump following his criticism of the Middle East war. Leo is not the first pope Dylan has met. He sang at a prayer vigil for young people in Bologna in 1997 hosted by John Paul II.
Dylan, who released his first album in 1963, was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature in 2016.
© 2024 AFP
