Patti Smith greeted Pope Leo XIV with two words at the Vatican on Friday, July 31: "Hi, hi." The phrase is the opening of her 1979 song "Wave," which imagines a conversation with Pope John Paul I — the pontiff who died after just 33 days in office in 1978. Pope Leo XIV recognised the reference immediately and told her, "That was marvellous," according to Rolling Stone.

The 40-minute private audience took place on the morning of July 31, 2026, at the Vatican, where the Holy See received the singer-songwriter and poet as part of its ongoing dialogue with the world of culture, Vatican News reported. Rev. Antonio Spadaro, undersecretary in the Vatican's culture ministry and a friend of Smith's, arranged the meeting and was present during the audience. He wrote about it afterwards on Instagram.

Smith and Pope Leo XIV share a hometown: both are from Chicago. The Associated Press reported that Smith appeared giddy and almost at a loss for words when she greeted her fellow Chicagoan, and she appeared to fight back tears during the encounter, according to National Catholic Reporter.

Smith is not a Catholic. She told Rolling Stone she was drawn to Leo XIV for his "gentle, open, and steadfast sense of humanity." She had performed in Rome just days before the meeting.

This was not Smith's first encounter with a pontiff. She met Pope Francis in 2013 and sang for him the following year. When Francis died in 2025, she wrote a poem about him. In May 2026, she performed at the inauguration of the Holy See's pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the contemporary art fair — an event that celebrated the one-year anniversary of Leo XIV's election.

Smith released "Wave" as the title track of her fourth album, recorded after she had stepped back from the music industry for several years to raise a family. The song's imagined papal dialogue now has a real-world counterpart nearly five decades later — and this pope had heard it.

For an artist whose work has long circled questions of faith, art and mortality, the Vatican meeting closed a circle Smith opened on record in 1979. The Vatican, for its part, used her full name — Patricia Lee Smith — in its official account of the visit.