ROME — Rock legend Patti Smith was giddy and almost at a loss for words when she met Friday with Pope Leo XIV.
“Hi,” she said softly as she sat down across from Leo at his desk in the Apostolic Palace.
Wearing a crucifix necklace and hair in her trademark braids, Smith has become an increasingly visible presence at the Vatican thanks to her friendship with the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary in the Vatican’s culture ministry.
She has said that while she is not Catholic, she was drawn in particular to Pope Francis and his “gentle, open, and steadfast sense of humanity.”
She also had a thing for Pope John Paul I: Her 1979 tune “Wave,” is about a make-believe conversation with the pope who had just died after a 33-day papacy. It begins “Hi. Hi” uttered in the same breathy voice Smith used with Leo on Friday.
The pope clearly was familiar with the tune. “That was marvelous,” he said.
Earlier this year, Smith performed during the inauguration of the Holy See’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale contemporary art fair. The occasion, May 8, was the anniversary of Leo’s election.
Spadaro, who joined Smith at Friday’s audience, said the encounter between the two Chicago natives was around 40 minutes long. In a text message, he said it “felt more like a conversation between two people discovering they were old friends, sharing memories woven from words and music, dreams, visions, and hopes — both from yesterday and for today.”
He said at the end, Smith said “Bye. Bye.”
Smith met Francis in 2013 and sang for him in 2014. When he died, on April 21, 2025, she wrote a poem on social media, comparing Francis to a dandelion, “humble yet strong.”
“Nature and poetry and the suffering shall miss their champion,” she wrote.
It was Leo’s second encounter with a music legend this week. On Wednesday, Leo attended a concert in his honor by tenor Andrea Bocelli.
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