The announcement that an American cardinal had been elected Roman Catholic Church’s 267th pope had special meaning for a group of students at an international Catholic school in Rome.

Pope Leo XIV, the first American leader of the Catholic Church, previously known as Robert Francis Prevost, returned to the Sistine Chapel the day after his election to deliver a mass for the College of Cardinals, where he described his role as both a cross to bear and a blessing and urged church leaders to make themselves “small.”