Bob Dylan was as surprised as his fans were Tuesday to hear he'd be performing for the pope next month.

"The pope, huh? I guess if the Vatican is reporting it, it must be happening," Dylan told USA TODAY in his first interview since contracting a rare heart infection in May. "I'm not sure it's going to happen. I know I was the only American they asked outside of Joni Mitchell."

Dylan is scheduled to perfom for Pope John Paul II Sept. 27 at the World Eucharistic Congress in Bologna, the Vatican announced Tuesday.

Once he confirms that appearance, Dylan says he'll also try to reschedule London dates that were cancelled when his health crisis forced him to pull out of a European tour.

Dylan entered a hospital with chest pains May 25 and was diagnosed with pericarditis, a swelling of the heart sac, brought on by a fungal infection call histoplasmosis.

"I'm doing as good as I can under the circumstances," he said via phone from a tour stop in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. "I'm still taking medication three times a day. Sometimes it makes me a little light-headed and dizzy. And I need to sleep a lot. I did get the doctor's OK to do this tour. I guess I'll make it through."

He plays tonight in Indianapolis, Thursday in Tinley Park, Ill.; Friday in St. Paul, Minn.,and ends the month-long tour Sunday in Kansas City, Mo.

"I wanted to do these shows because I'd committed to it," Dylan said. "I don't have the energy I usually have, so I have to save it all to perform. Outside of that, I'm doing as well as I can."

Fans panicked at the news that Dylan, 56, was suffering from a potentially fatal heart disease. In his only statement to the press, he joked, "I really thought I'd be seeing Elvis soon."

Now he reveals, "I was off my feet for six weeks. I was unable to walk around. When I got out of the hospital, I could hardly walk around my yard. I had to stay in bed and sleep all the time. I guess it's a slow process of recuperation."

The infection might have been less serious had it attacked an organ besides the heart. "If it had affected the stomach, it might have left sooner," he says. "But in the heart, there's no way to flush that out. It leaves on its own."

He was stricken while completing a new album, Time Out of Mind, due Sept. 30.

"Up until I was sick, I was putting songs on, taking songs off," he says. "I didn't know what picture it was forming. When I got sick I had to let it all go. I spent a lot of time making it, but I haven't really heard it in a few months."