Bob Dylan met Pope Leo XIV in a private audience on Wednesday, with the Vatican describing the encounter as brief and marked by greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges, according to Vatican News. The two exchanged gifts: Leo gave Dylan a rosary, while the musician presented the pope with his autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume One.”
The meeting followed the pope’s citation of Dylan’s unpublished 1963 protest song “Go Away You Bomb” in his book “Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift.” Leo quoted the lyric, “I hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned an’ man-handled,” and also praised pacifist Dorothy Day’s work for peace.
Dylan wrote the song for Izzy Young of the Greenwich Village Folklore Center. Young said in a 2013 interview that he had asked people he knew to write songs about the nuclear bomb and that Dylan brought him one the following day. The song’s typewritten lyrics, corrected by hand, were auctioned by Christie’s in the summer of 2013.
Leo has also met with other musicians, including Patti Smith in August and Bad Bunny in June, when the singer and the pope were both touring Spain.
Sources: Rolling Stone.