When the comedian Julia Louis-Dreyfus, in a 2024 episode of her podcast “Wiser Than Me,” recounted the details of a recent event she had attended, it made her guest, the actress Catherine O’Hara, “very jealous.”
It was not a glitzy awards gala or some exclusive party; it was a trip to the Vatican to meet with Pope Francis that summer, alongside about 100 other comedians.
“You should have been there; it’s silly that you weren’t,” Louis-Dreyfus tells O’Hara, who wasn’t invited.
“Yeah, come on, I’m Catholic,” she responds, before asking, excitedly, if Louis-Dreyfus, the “Seinfeld” and “Veep” star, got to speak with him.
“I shook his hand, and I said, ‘God bless you’ and he said, ‘God bless you, too,’” Louis-Dreyfus shared.
Though the Catholic Church has sometimes struggled to attract youth and modernize its religion, and has grappled with sexual abuse allegations, in recent years, it has experienced a resurgence in cultural cachet, particularly among Gen Z. A meeting and a photo with the pope has become a new kind of flex for celebrities and public figures who, otherwise, can mingle with almost anyone they choose.
Case in point: On Wednesday, Bob Dylan, who famously skipped his own Nobel Prize ceremony because of “pre-existing commitments,” had a private audience with Pope Leo during his tour through Italy. The two Americans traded gifts and “a few lighthearted exchanges,” the Vatican said. Dylan’s just the latest in a string of high-profile celebrities who find themselves gushing over the head of the Catholic Church.
“This is more and more a coveted invitation” because of what it can signal about the person who manages to secure that meeting, said Massimo Faggioli, a professor of historical theology at Villanova University and a leading expert on the Catholic Church.
Part of the intrigue stems from the difficulty of arranging a papal meeting. There are, of course, lower-level general audiences that draw millions of people to St. Peter’s Square every Wednesday.
For more intimate meetings, the Vatican’s department of culture invites a representative mix from industries, including comedy and cinema, to engage in conversation with the pope. Sometimes the Vatican will ask an intermediary — a celebrity who might have a connection to the church, for example — to help select and gather a group.
In 2024, Stephen Colbert, a practicing Catholic, shared on “The Late Show” that his friend the Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest, asked him to invite comedians for an audience with Pope Francis. Colbert tapped Louis-Dreyfus, as well as David Sedaris, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, Ramy Youssef, Jimmy Fallon and Conan O’Brien.
In the past, the Vatican’s culture department had sought out individuals who had “interpreted spiritual quests,” Faggioli said: Martin Scorsese met Francis in part because of his 2016 film “Silence,” which followed two Jesuit priests who travel to Japan.
But other times, these invitations seem random. In August, Dave Franco shared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that when his publicist received an invite for the actor to meet with Pope Leo, she was unsure if it was even real.
When they established that the invitation was authentic, Franco’s reaction was: “Why me and my wife? How did we get this invite?”
Then there are the private audiences that can be arranged through informal channels when someone knows someone at the Vatican. Those are “very hard to get,” Faggioli said.
In Dylan’s case, the intermediary was the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, who had also facilitated a meeting between the pope and the singer-songwriter and poet Patti Smith over the summer.
Yet, “no one is received because they are famous,” Father Spadaro said in an email to The Times. “An audience with an artist has to earn its place there. What matters is the encounter means something.”
One of Pope Francis’ missions was to make the Vatican more accessible and to align the church more closely with the media, arts and pop culture, Faggioli said. Francis embraced social media, became the first pope to appear on Italian TV talk shows and met with people more frequently. He was known for his selfies with parishioners.
His efforts are continued by his successor Pope Leo and have not gone unnoticed. In 2013, shortly after being elected, Pope Francis was named “Man of the Year” by the Italian edition of Vanity Fair and, the next year, became the first pope to grace the cover of Rolling Stone. His leadership coincided with the church’s growing role in popular culture, amid movies like “The Two Popes” and “Conclave.” In 2018, the Met Gala’s theme was an ode to Catholicism, with an exhibition that featured holy vestments on loan from the Vatican. In 2019, the second season of the show “Fleabag” introduced viewers to “the Hot Priest,” played by Andrew Scott.
There was also a different tenor to Pope Francis’ moral messaging, Faggioli said. “I’m old enough to remember that, in the ’80s or ’90s, a number of artists would have had reservations about meeting with the pope, because back then, the papacy was identified with an anti-woman agenda, anti-gay agenda, anti-abortion agenda,” he said.
Whoopi Goldberg, the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner, tried for years to meet with Pope Francis before she finally got a chance in 2023, she told Fallon on “The Tonight Show.”
She told Fallon she appreciated his openness toward gay people and divorced people — demographics that had in the past been alienated by the church.
Turns out, the pope was “a bit of a fan” of Goldberg and her turn as Sister Mary Clarence in the “Sister Act” movies.
“Did he ask for, like, a cameo in ‘Sister Act 3’?” Fallon asked.
“No, but I offered him one,” Goldberg said. “He said he’d see what his time was like.”
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