Bob Dylan met Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican on Nov. 4 wearing a hood pulled over his head. The photographs prompted widespread discussion and jokes online. But Antonio Spadaro, the Jesuit priest who helped arrange the meeting, says the focus on Dylan’s clothes overshadowed a larger point.
In the preface to his 2026 book, Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift, the pope quoted Dylan’s unpublished 1963 work “Go Away You Bomb,” Spadaro said. In it, Dylan calls the bomb something made, owned and handled by people.
Spadaro said Dylan took off his gloves to shake the pope’s hand. He described the moment as the meeting of the young songwriter who wrote the piece and the reader who quoted it decades later. The hood, he said, was a side note.
Both men wanted the meeting: Dylan wanted to meet the first American pope, and the pope was ready to receive him. The schedule left Wednesday free: Dylan had played Milan on Monday and was due in Rome on Thursday, while the pope was set to leave for Latin America on Friday.
Spadaro said he was not present for Dylan’s private conversation with the pope. Before it began, the two men sat across from each other at a table in the library and exchanged gifts: a rosary and a signed copy of Dylan’s book Chronicles.
Afterward, Dylan walked out silently and appeared absorbed in thought, Spadaro recalled. That afternoon, Dylan also signed Spadaro’s copy of 64 Lyrics, a bilingual anthology of songs, using a four-color BIC pen Spadaro had taken from his pocket.
