Bob Dylan - the False Prophet

Pope Benedict Expresses His Thoughts on Bob Dylan

In a new book written by Pope Benedict, he discloses his opposition of Dylan at concert in 1997 where the late Pope John Paul had attended. He referred to the aging rock star as the wrong kind of "prophet". At the time of the concert, Pope Benedict was only a Cardinal and thought the singer to be a "false prophet". "There was reason to be skeptical -- I was, and in a certain sense I still am -- to doubt if it was really right to let these types of prophets intervene," states the Pope in his new book.

"The Pope appeared tired, exhausted. At that very moment the stars arrived, Bob Dylan and others whose names I do not remember," Benedict wrote. "They had a completely different message from the one which the Pope had. There was reason to be skeptical -- I was, and in some ways I still am -- over whether it was really right to allow this type of 'prophet' to appear."

Most of the other artists at the concert were Italian and were not mentioned in the recent book written by Pope Benedict. At the concert Dylan sang three songs for the audience and the Pope, "Knockin on Heaven's Door", "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", and "Forever Young".

Pope Benedict is an accomplished pianist and loves classical and sacred music. But why would he label Dylan a "false prophet"? He does not state the reason behind his thoughts in his new book, he only makes the statement. In a similar situation, Pope Benedict cancelled the Vatican's traditional Christmas fund-raising concert last year since it was a virtual magnet for rock and roll stars.

Dylan, who was actually born Robert Zimmerman, grew up in a Jewish family in Minnesota. Over the span of his career he has been agnostic, Jewish, and born-again Christian. However, something about the music or Dylan himself did not quite agree with Pope Benedict, born-again Christian or not.

During the concert in 1997, Pope John Paul referred to one of Dylan's songs "Blowing in the Wind". The Pope looked out at the crowd of nearly 300,000 Italian Catholics and said that "the answer was indeed 'in the wind', but not in the wind that blew things away, rather 'in the wind of the spirit' that would lead them to Christ."