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Yesterday, maybe you heard, Bob Dylan met The Pope. Photos of Dylan’s Vatican summit with Pope Leo XIV took over the internet.
The man who arranged the meeting was Antonio Spadaro. He is a Jesuit priest who serves as undersecretary of the Dicastery for Culture and Education of the Holy See. He boasts a long background as a journalist as well, having served for years as editor at the Jesuit journal La Civiltà Cattolica. He currently writes a Substack you can find here.
This morning, Father Spadaro took the time to answer some of my questions via email about yesterday’s historic papal summit. Earlier this year, he also set up a meeting between the Pope and another one of my favorite artists, Patti Smith, so I asked him about that too.
Before we get to Dylan, can you explain your role at the Vatican? How did you become the person facilitating these meetings?
To put it simply, the Dicastery for Culture and Education is the Holy See’s ministry for two worlds. The first is Catholic schools, universities, and educational institutions around the globe. The second is dialogue with culture: art, literature, film, music, science.
Before Patti Smith, had you set up any other meetings between the Pope and major musicians?
No.
How did you first meet Patti Smith? My understanding is you’ve been friends for a while. (I remember reading an interview you did with her in a magazine a year or so ago.)
In Amsterdam, at an event organized by the Nexus Institute. They had invited both of us to a panel discussion, and that’s where we first met. The interview you’re thinking of I did in New York; it ran in Italian in la Repubblica and then in English in Commonweal. We’ve been in conversation ever since. We get breakfast whenever I’m in New York and spend time together talking about all kinds of things.
How did the meeting between Patti Smith and the Pope come about?
The Pope knew her through her music. And Patti and I had talked at length about both Francis and Leo. I could tell she would love to meet him, and the Pope was glad to meet her. It was July 31. When she sat down across the desk from him, all she said was “Hi,” almost in a whisper, and he laughed and said “Hi” back. Anyone who knows “Wave,” the song in which Patti imagines talking with John Paul I, knows that’s exactly how it begins. From there came a conversation of about forty minutes. Two people born in Chicago discovering they were old friends, sharing words, music, dreams, and hopes.
OK, let’s get to Dylan. How long ago did this idea come up? Whose idea was it?
I’d rather keep that private. My part was, let’s say, connecting the dots… Dylan was interested in meeting Leo, and Leo was completely open to it. After all, back in July Leo XIV had quoted “Go Away You Bomb,” a 1963 text Dylan never recorded, in the preface to a book on peace.
I imagine it is no small thing to set up a meeting with the Pope. What are the steps involved? Who do you have to convince? Has this meeting been attempted before?
It’s not about convincing anyone. The Pope decides. The meeting has to make sense and the timing has to line up, which is anything but a given with a man on tour and a Pope with his own schedule, as was the case here.
As I’m sure you know, Dylan performed for Pope John Paul II in 1997. Were you there?
It was the Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, in front of some three hundred thousand young people. Dylan sang “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” took off his hat, and went up to shake the Pope’s hand. John Paul II picked up the question from “Blowin’ in the Wind” about the roads a man must walk down and answered that there is only one road: Christ. Cardinal Ratzinger later wrote that he had been skeptical about that choice. Twenty-nine years later, seeing Dylan shake hands with another Pope tells you something about how long the questions his songs asked have endured. No, I wasn’t there.
Are you a big Dylan fan yourself?
I just wrote a long piece on how L’Osservatore Romano has covered Dylan over the decades. I love poetry. Dylan is a great poet.
Can you walk me through yesterday?
I’d arranged to meet Bob at 3:45 p.m. at St. Anne’s Gate, the entrance to the Vatican. He and his people showed up at 3:30. The Vatican gendarmes escorted us to the Apostolic Palace. We were very early, so we waited about forty-five minutes, chatting with total ease alongside Andrea Monda, editor-in-chief of L’Osservatore Romano, and Carlo Feltrinelli, Dylan’s publisher. Both are huge Dylan fans. Then at 4:20 we went up to the Third Loggia, to the Pope’s apartment. I felt the thrill of living through a meeting that had the taste of history, with the sense that anything could happen at every step. The Pope and Dylan sat down at a table in the library, like two old friends.
Do you know what they talked about?
What two people say to each other at a table stays between them. I understood that Bob wanted to talk with Leo one-on-one. But the way they looked at each other was beautiful, intense.
I saw he signed a book for you! What book was that?
Yes! An anthology of his songs. I asked him to. He smiled. I handed him a little four-color pen I had on me, and he inscribed it to me. It’s a treasured keepsake.
Dylan wears the black hood up all the time now. Was that an issue? Is there a dress code?
Dylan came dressed in black, with a tie, gloves, and the hood up over his head: that’s how he appears in public, onstage on this tour too. It’s his way of being himself right now. I know that for a fact. And in front of the Pope he wanted to feel like himself. In 1997 he came before John Paul II in a cowboy hat, and took it off to greet him. The photos from Wednesday show a smiling Pope. He took Bob’s outfit completely in stride. My impression was that, for Leo, the way Bob was dressed was entirely natural. No surprise at all. Besides, it was a private audience, not a formal one. No advance notice had been given.
Is the Pope a Bob Dylan fan, do you know? What sort of music does he like?
Dylan is part of Leo’s generation soundtrack. He has quoted him more than once. In April, in Cameroon, he echoed the themes of “Masters of War.” In July he used the lines of “Go Away You Bomb” to speak out against nuclear rearmament. Leo XIV is an Augustinian, and in 1967, on John Wesley Harding, Dylan dreamed he saw that very saint. The Pope was born in Chicago in 1955 and was a teenager at the turn of the sixties and seventies. The American pop, folk, and rock of that era has been part of his cultural makeup since he was young. But it was Jim Musselman, Prevost’s classmate at Villanova University and a Bob Dylan admirer, who revealed that the two of them talked about music a lot. He was the one who told him to read an essay arguing that Dylan was the great poetic talent of his generation.
Finally, are you going to Dylan’s show in Rome tonight?
Of course! I received the ticket from him.
Thank you Father Spadaro—and enjoy the concert! Follow him on Substack here.
Fantasmic, Ray. Great job landing the interview and enlightening the moment.
no one is doing it like FDDE.