WALPOLE -- Some of the students address him as "Holy Father," others "Your Holiness," others "Pope Leo XIV," and some simply "Pope Leo."

Some of their messages are colorful and scrawled, others written in immaculate print conforming closely to the lined paper. A few wrote poems. Some offered congratulations on being the first pope from the U.S. Most offered their prayers. Many drew doodles of themselves with Pope Leo XIV. Fifth grader Angela drew him with anime eyes.

"We have the same name, which is so cool!" wrote fourth grader Leo. "You are the pope in Rome, but I go to school. You are brave and strong, like a lion in a story. I try to be brave, but sometimes I worry."

Leo compared himself defending the goal during soccer games to how Pope Leo XIV defends the Catholic Church.

"We both try our best when we are playing our roles!" He wrote in green marker. "It's not easy being Leo, but we got this, my hero!"

The messages came from students at Blessed Sacrament School in Walpole, and were personally delivered to Pope Leo XIV by Principal Marilena Martucci and her assistant Alison Leary. The two women had a personal audience with the pope on March 11 to receive an apostolic blessing in honor of Blessed Sacrament's 60th anniversary.

"We were able to give the students a real connection with the pope, that the pope knows who they are," Martucci said. "They know that the pope is praying for them, for the students of Blessed Sacrament School in Walpole."

Martucci once attended a general audience with Pope St. John Paul II, but she had never hugged a pope until March 11.

"And he hugged me back," she said. "It was incredible, absolutely incredible, and I'll never forget it."

She released photos and a video of the meeting to the public after the school's 60th Anniversary Gala on April 11. The story has since been picked up by WCVB and ABC World News Tonight, bringing the school, which has 341 students from pre-K to eighth grade, to a national audience.

"I love the attention for the school because the kids do so much, the teachers do so much (and) the parents are amazing," Martucci said. "And for that recognition to be given on a national level is amazing, and if it helps Catholic schools in general and our school specifically, then that's just an added bonus."

She got the idea for the meeting when Pope Leo XIV announced the Jubilee Year of St. Francis, the patron saint of Blessed Sacrament School, in January. Martucci decided to send the pope an invitation to the school's 60th Anniversary Gala, in hopes of perhaps getting an apostolic blessing in return.

Eventually, she decided the best way to receive a blessing for the school would be to meet him in person. At first, Blessed Sacrament staff laughed -- except for Alison Leary, Martucci's assistant, who believed in her from the start. They reached out to Archbishop Richard G. Henning, other bishops, and everyone else they knew with Vatican connections. On Feb. 18, Ash Wednesday, Bishop Robert Reed told the school that he was able to secure tickets for an audience with Pope Leo XIV. When Martucci invited Leary to come to Rome with her, she couldn't say no.

"Just being in Rome itself, being in Vatican City, was mesmerizing," Leary said. "Meeting the pope is definitely a surreal experience, to the point that if we didn't have the photos it almost wouldn't seem like real life."

The students' messages for the pope were bound into a hardcover book and given as a personal gift to him.

"I presume it's in his bedroom and he reads it at night, but I don't know," Martucci joked.

Leary said that the pope was generous and "full of love."

"He was absolutely wonderful," Martucci said. "He was kind and funny, and it was a humbling and incredible experience."

While he had the gravitas of a pope, Martucci found him "very down-to-earth, very relatable."

"You felt that you were around someone that had an aura of kindness and goodness and authority," she said.

They talked about the school, the anniversary, the students, and "how wonderful Bishop Reed is." The pope also delivered a blessing to Blessed Sacrament and its students.

Upon returning to Walpole, the school received a handwritten apostolic blessing from Pope Leo XIV. The letter referenced specific pages of the book that the students had made for him.

"I'm sure he read it, and I'm sure he loved it as much as we loved making it for him," Martucci said.

Eighth grader Ayla Carchedi has attended Blessed Sacrament for 11 years, since she was in preschool. She wrote to Pope Leo XIV about the school, her friends, and the memories she made there.

"My whole life has been at BSS," she said. "So I wanted to talk about something that's really important to my life."

Eighth grader Kathryn Harris wrote about her pilgrimage to Italy in fall 2025, during the Jubilee Year.

"It was really moving to see all of the Catholic monuments," she said.

She attended a general audience with Pope Leo XIV while in Rome. Now, however, the pope knows her name, and knows that he is thinking about and praying for her and her classmates.

"I thought it was really special that I could write to him about how I went to see him in Italy," she said. "And it's really cool that now he knows that I was there, and he knows that I'm writing to him."