The picture of Pope Leo XIV’s first public Mass stopped me in my tracks — just like all of us who were at the National Catholic Register in the early 2000s.

There, in the Sistine Chapel, proclaiming the First Reading to rows of cardinals, was Sister Mary Mercy Lee, a Franciscan Sister of the Eucharist from Connecticut. But we saw Robyn Lee — the engine who kept the editorial side of the Register running back in the day.

First impressions are lasting impressions, and I saw the young Robyn coming into my office on her first day. She had a face of serene kindness, but she was extremely nervous in her first “real job.” So was I, meeting my first assistant as a young editor in over my head.

We figured it out together, and Robyn figured it out so well that her career took her next from Faith & Family magazine to Catholic Digest to Catholic Match, as editor of the dating service’s blog. There her posts went from “I Don’t Want to Be Alone!” to “I Quit Catholic Match for God.”

Her first “Catholic match” service was related to my wife. April loved Robyn, hired her for babysitting, and hosted matchmaking parties for young single people. Robyn played in a softball league, and we rarely missed a game, holding a giant “Rock ’em, Robyn!” sign. Once, when April admired a bracelet Robyn was wearing, she took it off and gave it to her.

That’s the Robyn I knew. But when I clicked over to YouTube to watch the Mass, I saw a woman transformed. She walked confidently to the lectern in the Sistine Chapel and read in a strong, calm voice.

I think I know what transformed her. There is a video clip of her somewhere on YouTube in her Franciscan habit describing the Queen Anne’s Lace flower. “One flower is made up of a bunch of different little flowers,” she said. “Each of these flowers is nourished by the center. That is the Eucharist. That’s Christ. The only way that these flowers are beautiful in themselves is by being centered in Christ.”

When she left Catholic Match, she wrote, “I’m leaving my job at Catholic Match because I fell in love,” and she described how she learned that “Jesus was asking me to be his spouse.”

More than a decade later, with a faithful legacy in the media (and teaching) behind her, she is now at the Vatican, working in the English-language section of the Secretariat of State. And May 9, in the Sistine Chapel, it all came full circle.

“The angel spoke to me saying, ‘Come!’ I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb,” she read — and we saw.

There was the little spouse of Christ, Sister Mary Mercy, embedded with the larger Bride, the Church, next to its leader, the Pope, in a scene transformed by Christ.