Dylan, 85, is touring Italy and came to the Vatican between concert dates in Milan and Rome. The pope is 71 and originally from Chicago. Dylan was born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota. The Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest and official in the Vatican's culture ministry, helped arrange the meeting and called it an "emotional and historic occasion". On his Instagram page he wrote of "a real sense of history". Andrea Monda, editor of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, also helped facilitate it, and the two men spoke privately. The Vatican press office did not immediately say what they discussed.

The Vatican released photographs, and its newspaper shared them. The pope is in his usual white vestments. Dylan wears black, most often described as a hooded sweatshirt.

Leo has a history with Dylan's work. In a preface to a book on disarmament published this year, he quoted "Go Away You Bomb", an unreleased 1963 anti-nuclear protest song, including the line "I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an' man-handled". The book carries a warning against nuclear rearmament.

It is Dylan's second documented encounter with the papacy. In 1997 he played three songs for Pope John Paul II at a Catholic gathering in Bologna, and the pope quoted "Blowin' in the Wind" in his address there.

Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. He became a born-again Christian in 1979 and later grew more guarded about his beliefs, though he told an interviewer in 2022 that he is a "religious person". He and Leo share Midwestern roots and an interest in St. Augustine, who appears in Dylan's 1967 song "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine".

Dylan is scheduled to play Rome's Palazzo dello Sport on Thursday, part of his "Rough and Rowdy Ways" tour. A ten-date UK tour begins later in November.