‘How I pray … many times I take the Bible, read a bit, then leave it and let the Lord look at me: that’s the most common idea of my prayer. I let the Lord look at me. And I hear – but this isn’t sentimentalism – I hear profoundly the things the Lord says to me. Sometimes he doesn’t speak – there is nothing, emptiness, emptiness, emptiness … but I stay patiently there, and I pray like this. I am seated, I pray sitting down, because it hurts me to kneel, and sometimes I fall asleep in prayer … It’s also a way of praying, as child with his Father, and this is important: I feel myself a child with the Father.’

– Pope Francis, interviewed by some young people from Ghent