Vatican City - Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday received Bob Dylan in the Vatican at an audience, for which the folk music legend wore a black hooded sweater.

The 85-year-old singer-songwriter, who was born Robert Allen Zimmerman, is currently in Italy on tour.

A report on the official Vatican News website said that the meeting was "brief, consisting of greetings and a few lighthearted exchanges".

The pope gave Dylan a rosary and the singer gifted the leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics his autobiography, the report said.

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Leo, the first pope to hail from the US, quoted a Bob Dylan lyric in the preface to a book about disarmament he published earlier this year, according to Vatican News.

The 71-year-old pontiff has taken strongly anti-war positions and repeatedly clashed with President Donald Trump following his criticism of the Middle East war.

Leo is not the first pope Dylan has met.

He sang at a prayer vigil for young people in Bologna in 1997, hosted by John Paul II.

Dylan, who released his first album in 1963, was awarded a Nobel Prize for literature in 2016.

The meeting comes as Leo returns to his engagements following a stint in the hospital, where he underwent surgery for lung cancer last month.