If anyone has an excuse to be tired it’s Pope Francis, who in addition to being 80 years old is also the spiritual leader for more than a billion Catholics around the globe.
In a recent interview with Catholic television program TV2000, the pontiff admitted that sometimes fatigue gets the best of him while he’s praying.
“When I pray, sometimes I fall asleep,” Francis said in the interview published on YouTube on Tuesday, according to translation by The Guardian.
“Saint Therese did it too,” he said, referencing a 19th-century French nun.
Saint Therese of Lisieux was known to frequently fall asleep during prayer, according to Society of the Little Flower, which promotes education about the mystic’s life.
“She was embarrassed by her inability to remain awake during her hours in chapel with the religious community,” the society explains on its website. But Therese eventually concluded that “just as parents love their children as much while asleep as awake, so God loved her even though she often slept during the time for prayers.”
The pope similarly noted that Christians are invited to feel like children lying in the arms of a loving father while they pray.
Francis starts and ends his days in prayer, rising at roughly 4:45 a.m. and turning the lights off by 10 p.m. His schedule is packed and busy ― and made possible with at least one nap during the day.
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