In what has been called the largest gathering of world leaders in recent history, U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday joined celebrities, clergy and commoners from around the world in a South African soccer stadium to pay tribute to Nelson Mandela.

Obama spoke to wild applause, praising the revered statesman who died Thursday, age 95.

“We will never see the likes of Nelson Mandela again,” Obama said, according to a CNN report.

Inside the stadium, the atmosphere was one of celebration, with people dancing, blowing vuvuzela plastic horns and singing songs from the anti-apartheid struggle, CNN reports.

Huge posters of Mandela hung inside the stadium, the same place where, 23 years earlier, he delivered his first speech after being released from prison.

Like Mandela, Obama was his country’s first black president and Obama has credited Mandela for inspiring him to enter politics.

“Regardless of our station or our circumstance, we must ask: How well have I applied his lessons in my own life?” Obama said.

“It is a question I ask myself, as a man and as a president. We know that like South Africa, the United States had to overcome centuries of racial subjugation. As was true here, it took sacrifice — the sacrifices of countless people, known and unknown — to see the dawn of a new day.”

Check out the video of Obama’s tribute to Mandela at WSJDigitalNetwork.