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Praying for an American Pope
"We’re rooting for an American pope," read the headline in La Reppubica on Tuesday, as the Roman travel industry keeps its fingers, well, crossed.
Roman hotels already are full as tourists and Catholics flock to be where history is made.
But "the word around the Vatican is that an American is best" for the local tourism industry, the paper said.
U.S. tourists are always welcome to bring their dollars here. Latin Americans make up 40% of the world’s Catholics.
In a traditionally slow season for travel, Rome already is happy to be hosting clergy from around the world and 5,000 foreign journalists.
Hotel bookings in the city rose more than 10% when Benedict XVI first announced he was stepping down, and one travel site reported a 60% increase in inquiries from Germany, the International Herald Tribune reported.
This morning, gambling website PaddyPower.com had Ghana’s Cardinal Peter Turkson in the lead, at 2:1 odds, followed by Italian Archbishop Angelo Scola at 3:1. But next were Brazilian Cardinal Odilo Scherer and Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet.
The top two contenders from the US, Archbishop of New York Timothy Dolan and Cardinal Sean O’Malley, were tied at 20:1.
But anything can happen in the next few days. The future of Rome’s travel industry rests, of course, in God’s hands.
By Cheryl Rosen
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