Vatican News reporter Kielce Gussie calls role at Pope Francis’ funeral ‘a huge honor’

American journalist Kielce Gussie learned just three days beforehand that she would be doing the first reading at Pope Francis’ funeral mass Saturday.

“My initial thought was ‘Oh my God’ but then, after I thought, ‘This is such a huge honor,’ to be a part of this momentous occasion,” she told CBS News.

“Also, for me, it’s such a big way to say thank you to Pope Francis.”

The 28-year-old Florida native writes for the Vatican News, the news portal of the Holy See, the governing body of the Catholic Church, according to her LinkedIn page.

She earned her bachelor’s in theology at Mount St. Mary’s University, a Catholic university in Maryland, and then went on to get a degree in church communication from the Pontifical University in Rome.

On her Instagram page @preferisco_paradiso, she describes herself as “Bringing the beauty of the Catholic Faith to people through social media and the world around us.”

Gussie actually met the pope twice — once on her birthday — and His Holiness even blessed her set of rosary beads.

“In those moments, I didn’t see him as the head of the Catholic Church, I saw him as a grandfather,” she told the outlet.

“And so for me, I will remember him as someone who really cared for each person that he met.”

She read from the Acts of the Apostles, the fifth book of the New Testament, in St. Peter’s Square, in front of the 250,000 mourners gathered.