Notre Dame High School senior Selena Mullinax’s ‘surprise’ leads to a gift blessed by the Holy Father
By Bee Goodman
Many have written fan mail to celebrities and imagined getting a reply. In 2017, an 11-year-old kid was granted his wish to mow the White House lawn after sending a request to President Trump. Now, high school senior Selena Mullinax of Chattanooga has received a special blessing from the first American pope, Pope Leo XIV.
Selena is an 18-year-old senior at Notre Dame High School and is a parishioner of the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul. In September, she wrote a letter to Pope Leo but wasn’t sure if she’d receive a reply. The letter passed through diocesan levels to the papal nuncio, the American representative of the Vatican, in Washington, D.C., and to her surprise, Selena received an envelope from the nuncio.
It started as a senior prank, or more a “senior surprise.” Selena and her friends discussed how unique it would be if the Holy Father could make a visit to their Chattanooga school. The idea arose that she would write a letter and have it sent to Bishop Mark Beckman. Selena shared that, during a recent visit by the bishop to Notre Dame, she became instantly connected to him. She spoke highly of how kindhearted he was.
Selena discussed with peers how it would be a funny prank to invite the Holy Father to the school. She shared that she’d rather do something kinder: “I thought this would be the perfect prank—it’s very wholesome. I don’t like the mal-intent behind pranks to get back at a teacher or someone you don’t like, like sticking the football field with forks for somebody else to clean. I don’t like that kind of thing.”
The bishop had previously visited the school and spoken to students, answering many of their questions. Selena shared that her fellow classmates “adored him and wanted him to visit again…He’s an incredibly nice person. I think that was so special for the seniors, and it would be awesome if we could see him again. Getting his approval on this kind of thing feels really special.”
Bishop Beckman was happily surprised to find that Selena received a response. He said, “That is fantastic. I’m glad she was able to do that. It is a great gift and a testament of her faith.”
Selena said that she felt she needed someone to give her a boost of confidence in her faith.
“I was overwhelmed and stressed, and it got better with this,” she said. “I went to God and thought ‘OK, whatever you want, get a letter back, get nothing back, Pope Leo coming or not—I will be satisfied.’ But I think I needed someone to go to and it happened to be the pope.”
Selena received a manila envelope containing a letter from Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the papal nuncio. Along with the letter from Cardinal Pierre was a special gift blessed by Pope Leo.
Selena Mullinax, a senior at Notre Dame High School in Chattanooga, holds a rosary blessed by Pope Leo XIV and a letter from Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States, that came with the rosary. (Photo Bee Goodman)
Selena opened a small navy pouch with an adorned rosary inside. With white beads, the rosary also includes a pendant showing the Vatican crest on one side and a portrait of St. Mary holding a young Jesus on the other. Getting a response from the nuncio was special, but receiving a gift blessed by none other than the Holy Father himself was a high honor, Selena said.
“I still feel like I’m in shock. I couldn’t even hold the rosary at first. I prayed with it the next night. It’s really beautiful,” she said.
Selena shared that many of her peers insisted she put the rosary away in a special place for safekeeping, but she protested this because she feels that she was given this blessing to continue growing in her faith, and it would be an injustice to not use the rosary as it was intended.
Selena recalls the moment she received an envelope at NDHS’s office. “I never get called to the office, and so when I did, I was confused. I got the envelope and thought, ‘Oh, they just sent it back, oh, no.’”
To her surprise, she saw when she flipped the envelope that it was addressed from the nuncio in Washington.
“I opened it and pulled all this stuff out. It felt kind of cinematic. It was very otherworldly.”
While everyone was rooting for Selena to receive a reply, many didn’t expect it to actually happen. She said that many thought it was never going to happen, but she argued, “I just knew something in my heart. I knew something would happen.”
Selena continued that she rehearsed affirmations from her faith that she would see good results, saying, “You’re going to get something back. You’re going to get a response. I am getting a response.”
While Cardinal Pierre expressed that the Holy Father would not be able to make a visit to Notre Dame, the nuncio did share with Selena that “the prayers that you and your fellow students offer for His Holiness are a real source of strength and a blessing that he carries out in his ministry.”
“And then he said something like ‘to help you feel the pope’s closeness to you, I enclose this photograph. His photograph and a rosary that was blessed by him,” Selena said.
As she shared the “pope selfie,” Selena laughed at how she and so many younger people find Pope Leo to be “such an adorable person, and (he) has a sweet-looking smile.”
She recalled sharing the letter with her older brother and how he noticed a filing number on the document. They researched and found that the Vatican archives all the letters and gifts shared with the Holy Father. Selena told of her excitement: “Oh, my gosh, I’m there, I’m everywhere. I thought it was really cool.”
While the Vatican receives hundreds of gifts and letters, most do get a reply. While Pope Leo himself doesn’t usually reply, he has a staff dedicated for reading and responding to letters that is responsible for doing so in a way that is centered on how the pope would respond. Though rare, the pope does provide direct contact through some letters and gifts.
Selena said that both of her parents were shocked when she received a response.
“My dad is very stern, and when he was reading it, he was smiling the whole time, and he was just like, ‘Wow, my daughter did that.’ Then my mom helped me the whole way. She wanted it to be my project, so she didn’t really want to have her toes in it, but she helped me a lot.”
Selena added how grateful she is to be a part of the Catholic family. Her parents were Baptist and converted sometime after their eldest son was born and before adopting Selena and her sister.
“My sister and I have always been Catholic,” she said. “We were adopted into it, and thank God we were. Thank God for putting me into a family that was Catholic because I found my faith very young. I’ve always had that.”
She cherishes time she gets to spend in Mass and recalls a time she had a special moment with someone after Mass, where if she hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened. She joked that she’s developed F.O.M.M., “Fear of Missing Mass,”as she called it, as opposed to the more common abbreviation F.O.M.O., Fear of Missing Out.
While Selena received guidance and help from others, she was the sole writer of the letter to the pope. She asked numerous teachers to check her grammar and spelling repeatedly because she wanted everything to be correct—so correct that Selena spent several days practicing her signature in a notebook. She noted that she had never signed anything particularly serious before this, so her first “real” signature went to Pope Leo.
She shared a moment with Notre Dame dean of faculty Ronnie Bradford.
“He holds the door open every single morning for everyone. And I told him, ‘I’m currently writing a letter to the pope, and I’m asking him to be our senior prank.’ And he just starts dying laughing,” Selena said, “and I told him, ‘No, I’m serious.’ And he said he was proud of me. I told (school chaplain) Father A.J. (Houston), too, and he said he was so proud of me.”
Selena recalled that after telling her mom she planned to write the letter, she asked ChatGPT when she could expect a response. The AI tool led her to believe that it would take several months to receive a response. Selena worried she was too late and only had a small window for the chance of Pope Leo to receive the letter and respond before her class graduated. Luckily, ChatGPT was incorrect, and Selena received her response in just a couple of short weeks.
Many others might probably fall to the pressures of anxious feelings and never send the letter, or have no real hope of receiving any correspondence, but the NDHS senior had no such misgivings about her project. Selena sent off her letter and never had a doubt she’d receive a blessing in return.
Though she didn’t get a direct response from Pope Leo, Selena said she wants to continue the line of communication.
“I think I’ll send him something for graduation, like how some people send an invite. I’ll do something like that,” she said hopefully.
Selena hopes to attend the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga or East Tennessee State University in fall 2026. Though she is caught between the choice of accounting and international business or political science, she is sure of one thing: she wants to do good.
So, Pope Leo isn’t quite available to visit the Chattanooga school. But there’s no doubt that Notre Dame High School is full of faith. The Holy Father surely has much to be proud of with this faithful community, regardless of whether he can take part in a senior surprise or not.