Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication, writes that “one of Jorge Mario Bergoglio’s traits has always been to ask his interlocutors to pray for him.”
“Even many years before becoming Bishop of Rome, he would not end a conversation or letter without that phrase the whole world has come to know over the past decade: ‘Please do not forget to pray for me,’” Tornielli continued. “For the Argentine Jesuit who is now the Successor of Peter, those words were never a matter of circumstance; and even if repeated thousands of times, they never became a mere worn-out habit.”