{"id":76931,"date":"2026-11-11T20:02:37","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T20:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/11\/bob-dylans-meeting-with-pope-leo-xiv-what-handshake-photo-means\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T20:02:37","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T20:02:37","slug":"bob-dylans-meeting-with-pope-leo-xiv-what-handshake-photo-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicianvoice.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/11\/bob-dylans-meeting-with-pope-leo-xiv-what-handshake-photo-means\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Dylan\u2019s Meeting With Pope Leo XIV: What Handshake Photo Means"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\n\tTimoth\u00e9e Chalamet fever aside, nothing Bob Dylan<\/a> has done in the wild in recent years has been so widely discussed by mainstream media \u2014 and so instantly meme-ified \u2014 as the photos of Dylan, in a hood pulled up and over his head, meeting Pope Leo XIV<\/a> at the Vatican on Nov. 4.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat one wore black, the other white had Twitter tripping over itself to make pithy comments like it was a New Yorker cartoon caption contest. And Dylan\u2019s hoodie was instant headline fodder. The Wall Street Journal<\/em> clutched their pearls<\/a>. GQ<\/em> announced that Dylan dressed like Chalamet.<\/a> The Daily Beast<\/em> reported outrage! Star Wars<\/em> was mentioned\u2026 a lot.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Antonio Spadaro, a Jesuit priest serving as undersecretary for culture and education at the Holy See who brokered the meeting, says Dylan\u2019s attire spoke so loudly that people missed the larger message.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeople talked a lot about what Dylan was wearing that afternoon and very little about what the pope had written,\u201d Spadaro says, referring to the fact that the pope quoted \u201cGo Away You Bomb\u201d \u2014 an unpublished 1963 Dylan work \u2014 in the preface of his 2026 book, Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tIn the work, Dylan wrote to the bomb: \u201cI hate you cause yer man-made and man-owned, an\u2019 man-handled.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn 1963, a young man just past 20, in New York, told a bomb to its face that it was the work of human hands,\u201d Spadaro says. Sixty-three years later \u201cthe author of that sheet of paper \u2014 which no one had wanted to buy at auction \u2014 shook hands with his most authoritative reader. For anyone who believes in the weight of words, it is a small parable. The hood, by comparison, is a side note.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSince the musical and papal summit, Spadaro \u2014 a native of Messina, Italy, and former editor-in-chief of La Civilt\u00e0 Cattolica,<\/em> who now writes a Substack <\/a>\u2014 \u00a0has been doing the Lord\u2019s work by sharing photos of the Midwesterners\u2019 meeting on social media.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe posted a few shots of their handshake. One photo, which he posted twice, was striking: A zoomed-in shot of Dylan\u2019s hand clasping the pope\u2019s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tWith its blue veins, purple-ish hue, and dry white powdery skin, Dylan\u2019s hand looking every minute of his 85 years.\u00a0But the appendage was also a peek behind the curtain. A lift under the hood. That papery hand seemed to say: \u201cI\u2019m human and I need this spiritual touch as much as the next guy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWe asked Spadaro, 60, to elaborate on the photos he posted on Instagram. Via email, the priest and author \u2014 \u00a0whose most recent books are A passo d\u2019uomo<\/em> with a foreword by Patti Smith, and Conversations on Faith<\/em> <\/a>written with Martin Scorsese \u2014 shared his thoughts on hands, hoods, and how David Sedaris fits into all this.<\/p>\n

\n\tI was so moved by the photo you posted on Instagram, a close-up of their hands clasped. Almost like a Renaissance painting detail, a meeting of two old sages. What prompted you to zoom in that close?<\/strong>
The hands said what the hood kept hidden. Bob\u2019s face was in shadow; his hands, though, were bare, and he had bared them himself, taking off his gloves to greet the pope. That handclasp holds the hand of the young man, just past 20, who typed out \u201cGo Away You Bomb\u201d in 1963, and the hand of the pope who quoted it against nuclear rearmament 63 years later.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou\u2019re right to think of painting. I thought of D\u00fcrer\u2019s \u201cPraying Hands,\u201d<\/a> the 1508 study in which the veins and the worn skin tell an entire life.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBy tightening the frame, I took away the fame and the colors of their clothes. What remained were two men well along in years, clasping hands, and it seemed to me the truest photograph of that afternoon.<\/p>\n

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\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tDylan morphs over the years, sartorially. When he was in his Nudie-suit-and-cowboy-hat-phase, he wore that to meet Pope John Paul II. I love that Dylan stayed true to his current phase here. Did the pope have a reaction to that? Did anyone?<\/strong>
One detail about 1997 makes the story even better. In Bologna, Dylan performed in his cowboy hat, but when he climbed the steps toward John Paul II, he took it off. This time the hood stayed where it was, and what came off were the gloves, so he could shake the pope\u2019s hand. In 1997 he bared his head; in 2026, his hands.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe only one who hesitated, I admit, was me. At St. Anne\u2019s Gate, I asked his team whether it might be better to lower it, and they explained that the hood, these days, is part of how Bob moves through the world, onstage and off. That was enough for me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tLeo looked the man in the eye, and the hood receded into the background. On social media, some people brought up Emperor Palpatine [from Star Wars<\/em>]. The scene was much simpler. The pope was perfectly at ease, as if he already knew Bob would show up that way.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat sparked this meeting? Did Dylan want to meet the pope or vice versa? How did you get involved?<\/strong>
The wish was there on both sides: Bob wanted to meet the first American pope, and the pope needed no convincing. A man who has already quoted you in a footnote is ready to receive you.<\/p>\n

\n\tI knew the right people on both sides, and I found myself in the middle, as a kind of hub. The real work was scheduling. Dylan played Milan on Monday and was due to play Rome Thursday. The pope was leaving for Latin America on Friday. That left Wednesday, a day when Bob had no show. That was all it took.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pope seems to be a Dylan fan. He quoted from \u201cGo Away You Bomb\u201d in his book \u2014that\u2019s a deep pull. I\u2019m a Dylan nerd, and had to Google it. I could only find 2013<\/strong> articles<\/strong><\/a> <\/u>about those lyrics going up for auction at Christie\u2019s. They <\/strong>never even sold<\/strong><\/a>. Is the Pope a hardcore Dylanologist?<\/strong>
It depends on what we mean by Dylanologist. The word makes me think of A.J. Weberman, who in the early 1970s went through Dylan\u2019s trash in Greenwich Village. In that sense, I\u2019d say definitely not.<\/p>\n

\n\t[That] you had to Google, though, says a lot. \u201cGo Away You Bomb\u201d isn\u2019t on any record. Dylan wrote it in 1963 and never recorded it. It was meant for a songbook against the atomic bomb that Izzy Young, of the Folklore Center, never managed to publish.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sheet stayed among Young\u2019s papers for half a century, then went up for auction at Christie\u2019s \u2014 that\u2019s how the lyrics became public. The pope came to it as a reader, so much so that in the footnote he calls it a \u201cpoetic composition\u201d and places it next to Augustine and Paul VI, with title and year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe could have chosen \u201cMasters of War,\u201d which everyone knows. I don\u2019t see a Dylanologist so much as a reader who knows where to look.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou wrote about <\/strong>Jim Musselman,<\/strong><\/a> the pope\u2019s Villanova classmate, on Instagram. Tell me more about their Dylan connection.\u00a0<\/strong>
The two met at Villanova in the 1970s, in a philosophy class, and immediately found common ground in two things, baseball and Bob Dylan.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Leo\u2019s election, Musselman recalled that the two of them talked about music a lot, and that he had given his friend an essay arguing that Dylan was the great poetic talent of their generation. Which essay, I don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

\n\tI really like the rest of his story. Musselman founded a folk label, Appleseed Recordings, and for years released records by Pete Seeger and other singers of social conscience. Leo\u2019s Dylan comes from there: from a classmate with a passion for songs that set out to change things.<\/p>\n

\n\tDylan had a private talk with the pope. You said you weren\u2019t there.<\/strong>
No, and I think that\u2019s as it should be. I understood that Bob wanted to be alone with Leo, and we left the room. I saw the before and the after.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore: two men sitting across from each other at a table in the library, some light banter, the exchange of gifts, a rosary on one side and a signed copy of Chronicles<\/em> on the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter: Bob walking out in silence, deeply absorbed, with the look of a man who is happy and has no intention of explaining why. Then again, Dylan has spent 60 years not explaining his songs. He certainly wasn\u2019t going to start with that conversation.<\/p>\n

\n\tDylan signed your copy of <\/strong>64 Lyrics<\/em><\/strong><\/a>. I love that he used your four-color BIC pen. People jumped on that detail on social media.<\/strong>
\u201c64 Lyrics\u201d is a bilingual anthology published in Italy by Crocetti in its poetry series: 64 songs \u2014 English on one side, the Italian translation on the other. It was edited by Alessandro Carrera, Dylan\u2019s Italian translator, and Carlo Feltrinelli, his Italian publisher, who was with us that afternoon in the Apostolic Palace.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt some point in the afternoon I asked him if he would sign it for me. He smiled and said \u201cmaybe,\u201d and I pulled the pen out of my pocket. I love those pens. I clicked down the black myself.<\/p>\n

\n\tI understand why people had fun with it. On an afternoon of loggias and gendarmes, the object everyone remembers is a pen that costs pocket change. To me it seems perfect: even a Nobel Laureate, when the moment comes, signs with whatever pen is at hand.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou also connected Patti Smith\u2019s meeting with Pope Leo this past summer. \u00a0<\/strong>
Patti and I have known each other for five years. We met in Amsterdam, at a debate held by the Nexus Institute, which had invited us both; then I interviewed her in New York, and a friendship grew out of that, made mostly of long breakfasts near her home. When I\u2019m in town we get together.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the election of Leo, at some point it became clear to me that she wanted to meet him. In late July, Patti was touring Europe and was due to play Rome. That was the opportunity. The pope said yes, and I made two schedules fit together.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat was that like to witness? Again, I love the post you shared<\/a> on Instagram \u2014 she\u2019s gazing at the pope, almost like a kid. <\/strong>
I saw a woman who has sung in front of enormous crowds become almost speechless. [Her] first sound was \u201cHi,\u201d and anyone who knows \u201cWave\u201d knows where that comes from. In that 1979 song, Patti imagines talking to John Paul I and begins exactly that way. <\/p>\n

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\n\tForty-seven years later, the imagined conversation became real. Leo caught the reference right away. They talked for about 40 minutes, and at the end she took her leave with \u201cBye. Bye.\u201d Between those two tiny words was a conversation between two people from Chicago who recognized each other.<\/p>\n

\n\tI interviewed David Sedaris about meeting the pope. Afterward, he visited the papal tailor, Gammarelli. He told me he still wears the cassock. He went with Stephen Colbert and a slew of comedians \u2014 Whoopi Goldberg, Conan O\u2019Brien, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Were you there?<\/strong>
I was there, and I had a great time. That meeting was an initiative of the Dicastery for Culture and Education together with the Dicastery for Communication.\u00a0If you think about it, it\u2019s a nice counterpoint to the Dylan story: the humorist left the Vatican in search of a cassock, and the singer-songwriter came in wearing a hood.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n