A giddy Patti Smith meets fellow Chicago legend, Pope Leo XIV, and says "Hi"

ROME (AP) — 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 Bie