Pope Leo XIV said Fri­day that his elec­tion was both a cross to bear and a bless­ing as he cel­e­brat­ed his first Mass and de­tails be­gan to emerge of how votes swift­ly co­a­lesced to make him his­to­ry’s first Amer­i­can pope.

Freed from their con­clave, car­di­nals be­gan de­scrib­ing the days and hours lead­ing up to the fi­nal bal­lot Thurs­day af­ter­noon that brought Leo past the two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty need­ed. Many mar­veled that the Chica­go-born Au­gus­tin­ian mis­sion­ary Robert Pre­vost reached the thresh­old so quick­ly, giv­en the vast di­ver­si­ty of vot­ers and the tra­di­tion­al taboo against a U.S. pope be­cause of the sec­u­lar pow­er the coun­try wields.

“It is a mir­a­cle of the Holy Spir­it,” said Car­di­nal Fer­nan­do Na­talio Choma­lí Garib, arch­bish­op of San­ti­a­go, Chile. He not­ed that 133 men who bare­ly knew one an­oth­er from 70 coun­tries came to an agree­ment in just over 24 hours. A mir­a­cle, he said, “and al­so an ex­am­ple for all our coun­tries where no­body comes to an agree­ment.”

Leo presided over his first Mass be­fore those same car­di­nal elec­tors Fri­day morn­ing, speak­ing off-the-cuff in Eng­lish in the Sis­tine Chapel. He ac­knowl­edged the great re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they had placed on him be­fore de­liv­er­ing a brief but dense homi­ly in Ital­ian on the need to joy­ful­ly spread Chris­tian­i­ty in a world that of­ten mocks it.

“You have called me to car­ry that cross and to be blessed with that mis­sion, and I know I can re­ly on each and every one of you to walk with me as we con­tin­ue as a church, as a com­mu­ni­ty, as friends of Je­sus, as be­liev­ers, to an­nounce the good news, to an­nounce the Gospel,” he said.

Leo on Sat­ur­day meets with car­di­nals for­mal­ly. On Sun­day, he is set to de­liv­er his first noon bless­ing from the log­gia and at­tend an au­di­ence with the me­dia on Mon­day in the Vat­i­can au­di­to­ri­um. Leo will be for­mal­ly in­stalled as pope at a Mass on May 18 and will pre­side over his first gen­er­al au­di­ence May 21.

Mean­while, he asked all Vat­i­can lead­ers, who tech­ni­cal­ly lost their jobs when Fran­cis died April 21, to re­main in their posts un­til he de­cides de­fin­i­tive­ly on whether to con­firm them.

The Amer­i­cans share some de­tails

At a rol­lick­ing news con­fer­ence at the U.S. sem­i­nary up the hill from the Vat­i­can, some of the Amer­i­can car­di­nals who saw one of their own be­come the 267th pope seemed to dis­tance Leo from both his cit­i­zen­ship and the po­lit­i­cal polemics of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion back home. Some re­called the decades Pre­vost spent as a mis­sion­ary in Pe­ru and his Pe­ru­vian cit­i­zen­ship and said, re­gard­less, he has a new iden­ti­ty as pope.

“Where he comes from is sort of now a thing of the past,” said New York Car­di­nal Tim­o­thy Dolan, who had been Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s pick for pope. “Robert Fran­cis Pre­vost is no longer around. It’s now Pope Leo.”

But Car­di­nal Joseph To­bin, an old friend of Pre­vost’s who slipped up, call­ing him “Bob … Pope Leo,” said he ex­pect­ed the pope would be true to him­self. He said that was the mes­sage con­veyed to all the elec­tors by the re­tired preach­er of the pa­pal house­hold, Car­di­nal Raniero Can­ta­lames­sa, who de­liv­ered a med­i­ta­tion in the Sis­tine Chapel be­fore they took their first vote.

“He gave ad­vice that we all heard, just in case, ad­vice to the one who’s go­ing to be elect­ed: And he said, ‘Be your­self,’” To­bin said.

To­bin re­vealed that he had talked with his old friend about his re­al chances in the days be­fore the vot­ing be­gan. But To­bin re­count­ed the mo­ment when saw it had sunk in for Pre­vost him­self: To­bin had just cast his bal­lot be­fore Michelan­ge­lo’s “The Last Judg­ment’” and re­turned to his seat.

“Then I went back and I took a look at Bob, be­cause his name had been float­ing around. And he had his head in his hands,” To­bin said. “And I was pray­ing for him be­cause I couldn’t imag­ine what hap­pens to a hu­man be­ing when you’re fac­ing some­thing like that.”

“And then when he ac­cept­ed it, it was like he was made for it,” To­bin said.

A pa­pal Mass

The car­di­nals urged the pub­lic and faith­ful to give Leo time to get used to his new role be­fore try­ing to un­der­stand what kind of pope he will be.

But some clues were al­ready ap­par­ent. Two women de­liv­ered the read­ings of Scrip­ture at the start of Leo’s Mass, per­haps an in­di­ca­tion of an in­ten­tion to con­tin­ue Fran­cis’ fo­cus on ex­pand­ing women’s role in the church. As a car­di­nal, Leo put in­to prac­tice one of Fran­cis’ most rev­o­lu­tion­ary re­forms by hav­ing three women serve on the Vat­i­can board that vets bish­op nom­i­na­tions.

Speak­ing in near-per­fect Ital­ian, Leo lament­ed that the Chris­t­ian faith in many parts of the world is “con­sid­ered ab­surd,” mocked or op­posed in the face of temp­ta­tions such as mon­ey, suc­cess and pow­er. He com­plained that in many places Je­sus is mis­un­der­stood, “re­duced to a kind of charis­mat­ic leader or su­per­man.”

“This is true not on­ly among non­be­liev­ers but al­so among many bap­tized Chris­tians, who thus end up liv­ing, at this lev­el, in a state of prac­ti­cal athe­ism,” he said. “A lack of faith is of­ten trag­i­cal­ly ac­com­pa­nied by the loss of mean­ing in life, the ne­glect of mer­cy, ap­palling vi­o­la­tions of hu­man dig­ni­ty, the cri­sis of the fam­i­ly and so many oth­er wounds that af­flict our so­ci­ety.”

The car­di­nals ap­plaud­ed as the Mass con­clud­ed. Leo was seen wear­ing sim­ple black shoes — es­chew­ing, as Fran­cis did, the red loafers of the pa­pa­cy pre­ferred by some tra­di­tion­al­ist popes.

In an­oth­er sig­nal he might break with tra­di­tion, Leo spent his first night as pon­tiff in his res­i­dence in the Sant’Uf­fizio Palace, and not the Apos­tolic Palace where popes tra­di­tion­al­ly re­side, Vat­i­can News re­port­ed. Fran­cis chose to live in an apart­ment in the San­ta Maria guest­house.

How did it hap­pen?

Car­di­nals re­vealed that they got to know Pre­vost dur­ing the pre­con­clave dis­cus­sions, not be­cause he made some show­stop­ping speech like Pope Fran­cis did in 2013. Then, Car­di­nal Jorge Mario Bergoglio spoke about the need for the church to go to the “ex­is­ten­tial pe­riph­eries” to find wound­ed souls and was elect­ed a short time lat­er. This time, Pre­vost made an im­pres­sion with his man­ner, in small groups.

“It wasn’t that he got up and made some over­whelm­ing­ly con­vinc­ing speech that just wowed the body,” said Car­di­nal Wilton Gre­go­ry, the re­tired arch­bish­op of Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

Ger­man Car­di­nal Rein­hard Marx, a close ad­vis­er of Fran­cis, said he took note of the man who would be­come pope — an Amer­i­can with deep ex­pe­ri­ence in Latin Amer­i­ca, strong lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al flu­en­cy, and a his­to­ry of lead­er­ship as su­pe­ri­or of the Au­gus­tini­ans.

“That con­vinced me to say this could be a pos­si­bil­i­ty,” Marx told re­porters Fri­day. “I can tell you, I’m very hap­py.”

Marx al­so re­called meet­ing the fu­ture pope last year and be­ing struck by his tem­pera­ment.

“We had a very good con­ver­sa­tion,” he said. “I re­al­ized he’s a man who lis­tens, takes ar­gu­ments se­ri­ous­ly, weighs them. You can’t just place him in­to one camp — he re­al­ly tries to build bridges. I liked that very much.”

VAT­I­CAN CITY (AP)