Bob Dylan Plays for the Pope

Two emblematic figures of the twentieth century met for the first time on Sept. 27, 1997: One was Bob Dylan, and the different was Pope John Paul II.

This curious second occurred in Bologna, Italy, the place the 77-year-old pope was attending a Eucharistic Congress that was billed particularly for younger folks “and their music.” Roughly 300,000 Catholic youths had been current.

Drummer David Kemper remembers the occasion as his very first gig with Dylan’s band. Dylan’s supervisor “Jeff Kramer called and said, ‘Bob would like you to join his band,'” Kemper instructed Rolling Stone in 2022. “I said, ‘Sure. How do we get going?’ He goes, ‘Well, we got a gig with the pope in Bologna.’ I said, ‘Say that again?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, the pope. John Paul II invited us to a Eucharistic Congress.'”

Before Dylan started his efficiency, the pope addressed the crowd: “You say the answer is blowing in the wind, my friend. So it is: but it is not the wind that blows things away, it is the breath and life of the Holy Spirit, the voice that calls and says, ‘Come!’

“You ask me what number of roads a person should stroll down earlier than he turns into a person,” the pope added. “I reply: There is just one highway for man, and it’s the highway of Jesus Christ, who mentioned, ‘I’m the Way and the Life.'”

Dylan and his band then took the stage, first performing “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” followed by “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.”

“We’re enjoying the first music,” Kemper recalled, “and I look and over to my left in the again nook, I noticed John Paul sitting there. He was resting his head on his fingers. I used to be pondering, ‘Is this man alive? Is he listening? He’s on the market for everyone to see.’ But Bob was on good conduct; I might inform. It was nice. I loved it fully.” Dylan then removed his cowboy hat and made his way up the steps to greet the pope personally, before returning to the stage for an encore of “Forever Young.”

Watch Bob Dylan Meet Pope John Paul II in 1997

Not everyone completely enjoyed it, however, including the future Pope Benedict XVI. Joseph Ratzinger, then a cardinal, admitted he was apprehensive about hosting Dylan and having him perform. “There was purpose to be skeptical, and I used to be,” Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his 2007 book, John Paul II, My Beloved Predecessor. “Indeed, in a sure sense, I nonetheless am as we speak.”

Particularly in the early days of his career, Dylan was often described as the voice of his generation, a symbol of personal and political revolution. He openly disliked and frequently dismissed these notions, but they formed the basis for Pope Benedict XVI’s worries over “whether or not it was proper to let this sort of so-called prophet take the stage.”

Dylan’s relationship with religion had, at times, also been a subject of controversy. He grew up in a Jewish family, and though he never outwardly rejected Judaism, he also didn’t feel the need to analyze it much. “I’m a Jew,” he told The Washington Post in 1987. “It touches my poetry, my life, in methods I am unable to describe. Why ought to I declare one thing that ought to be so apparent?”

Then, in the late ’70s, Dylan surprised his fans when he declared himself a born-again Christian. Three albums of evangelical-inspired music followed: 1979’s Slow Train Coming, 1980’s Saved and 1981’s Shot of Love. Then Dylan abruptly went back to recording mainly secular music and speaking little about religion.

“People name you this or they name you that,” he told Rolling Stone in 1984, “however I can’t reply to that, as a result of then it looks as if I’m defensive – and, you realize, what does it matter, actually?”

Still, as Dylan saw it, he and the pope weren’t all that incompatible. They just saw things from a different point of view. “Here’s the factor with me and the spiritual factor,” Dylan told Newsweek in 1997. “This is the flat-out fact: I discover the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I do not discover it anyplace else.

“Songs like ‘Let Me Rest on a Peaceful Mountain’ or ‘I Saw the Light’ – that’s my religion,” he added. “I don’t adhere to rabbis, preachers, evangelists, all of that. I’ve learned more from the songs than I’ve learned from any of this kind of entity. The songs are my lexicon. I believe the songs.”