Photographs of the American Pope meeting the American poet went viral in part because of Dylan’s black, hooded attire
Bob Dylan is rarely photographed voluntarily. When he performs live, cellphones are usually banned. But on Wednesday, the enigmatic musician posed for photographs with Pope Leo XIV during a private meeting, dressed all in black, his face partially obscured by an oversize black hoodie.
Standing next to the leader of the Catholic Church, who wore his traditional cassock and zucchetto cap with a silver cross, Dylan looked like an otherworldly prophet—the darkness of his attire a stark contrast with the white of Pope Leo’s papal garments. On social media, Dylan’s get-up invited comparisons to a “Star Wars” villain, a spy and a chastened schoolchild.
The encounter between the first American Pope and America’s foremost poet—two Midwestern Roberts best known by other names—was bound to be momentous for Catholics and Dylan die-hards. And that was before Dylan showed up wearing not a suit-and-tie, but the hooded jacket over a baseball hat and collared shirt with a polka-dot cravat. Atop the hoodie, he wore a zippered, workwear-style jacket, as well as black leather gloves, black cowboy boots and a black umbrella with a red strap.
Father Antonio Spadaro, the undersecretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, helped broker the meeting between the pope and Dylan. In an email, Spadaro wrote that he initially asked Dylan’s entourage if Dylan might remove the hood, but was told that for Dylan, the hood was “normal, and taking it off would have meant showing up as someone else.” Spadaro added: “That was enough for me.”
Spadaro, who was present for the introduction of the two men before leaving to let them speak privately, said Pope Leo was completely unfazed by Dylan’s attire. “When he took off his gloves to greet the pope, and the two of them shook hands firmly, looking each other in the eye, I was moved,” said Spadaro, who noted that growing up in Chicago in the 1960s and ‘70s, Pope Leo—whose name is Robert Prevost—was familiar with Dylan’s music.
In July, the Holy Father quoted the Bob Dylan song “Go Away You Bomb” in an introduction to a collection of his writings on peace. The lyrics, written in 1963, were never recorded and resurfaced at an auction in 2013.
“A meeting like this is the pope’s decision,” said Spadaro. “I don’t know what they said to each other, and that’s as it should be.” Referring to Dylan, Spadaro added: “When he came out, his expression was intense, deeply focused. He didn’t say a word, but you could tell he was happy.” Both Pope Leo and Bob Dylan declined to comment.
Worn by anyone else, Dylan’s attire might have constituted a serious faux-pas. But over the course of his long and unpredictable career, the musician has turned subverting expectations into an art form. He may no longer be shocking folk-music fans by plugging in an electric guitar, but at 85 years old, he still lives by his own inscrutable and unspoken codes.
The hood is now part of his lore.
In September 2025, Dylan wore a giant hooded rain jacket during a performance in the final leg of an outdoor summer concert series with Willie Nelson. Dylanologists like the music writer Ray Padgett saw the sartorial move as a strategy to avoid being documented by the audience.
At points, Dylan also positioned himself on stage behind various obstructions, including his piano and standing stage lights, making it nearly impossible for the audience to see him, Padgett said.
The hood reappeared on Dylan’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways” tour in March and it “has never, never left ever since,” said Padgett.
Gauthier Borsarello is the designer of the Fursac workwear-style jacket Dylan wore over his hoodie at his meeting with the pope. Borsarello said he has received hundreds of messages about it since the images were released on Wednesday. “People are going crazy,” he said.
Borsarello, who is no longer employed by Fursac, said the jacket was part of a collection released in 2023 and that it sold for around $700. “I wanted something classic and easy to sell at the time, but with this little rock ‘n’ roll detail,” he said.
The first time Dylan met a pope—John Paul II in 1997—he was partial to cowboy hats and Nudie-style suits. Dylan performed a few songs for the Catholic leader and an audience of 300,000 young people as part of the 23rd National Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, Italy. Afterward, Dylan removed his hat and shook the pope’s hand.
Dylan rarely gives interviews and his current religious practice is unknown. He released three albums in the late 1970s and early 80s that were inspired by a Christian conversion experience. His website features an interview between him and music writer Jeff Slate, some of which was published in The Wall Street Journal in 2022. “I’m a religious person,” Dylan said in the interview. “I read the scriptures a lot, meditate and pray, light candles in church. I believe in damnation and salvation, as well as predestination. The Five Books of Moses, Pauline Epistles, Invocation of the Saints, all of it.” In 2004, he also told “60 Minutes” that his punishing performance schedule—fans call it the Never Ending tour, since he hasn’t taken long breaks since 1988—was part of a deal he had made with the “chief commander,” a classically inscrutable Dylanism.
On Thursday night in Rome, Dylan performed at the Palazzo dello Sport, his first show since meeting Pope Leo. As has become his custom in recent years, he closed with “Every Grain of Sand,” off a 1981 album “Shot of Love,” considered the final album of his Christian trilogy. He wore a white hooded jacket over a black hooded jacket, and kept both on throughout the show.
