ROME
NBC News
By Alastair Jamieson, Keir Simmons and Yuka Tachibana, NBC News
ROME — An American cardinal in Rome hinted Sunday hinted at the difficulty of deciding who should be the next pope, saying the papal conclave was a time when “the will of God is not entirely clear.”
Chicago’s archbishop, Cardinal Francis George, asked for “help and prayers” as he and 114 other cardinals prepared to enter the papal conclave to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI.
“I ask you for your prayer to help the Holy Spirit to be present among us to open our hearts and our minds to what is the will of God for his people throughout the world,” he told reporters after saying mass at the local church assigned to him during his stay in Rome.
He added: “This is a momentous occasion, when perhaps the will of God isn’t entirely clear to many of us.”
Vatican observers say the choice is wider than it has been in modern memory, with no emerging consensus on who should be the next leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics.
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