Rome, April 4 (Reuters): Grief or no grief, many Italian lottery addicts are looking to the late Pope John Paul for their lucky number.

Across the Roman Catholic country, punters are rushing to lotto sellers and gambling on numbers linked to the Polish Pontiff in the belief those digits are now lucky, a betting news agency said.

?Since this morning there are many, many bets on the numbers of the Pope,? the agency, AGICOS, said.

The most popular numbers are 21 and 37, corresponding to the time of death (21:37 local), the number 2 after the day of the Pope?s death on April 2, and 84, his age at death.

Italians have long been dedicated gamblers and in 2004 they spent 23 billion euros ($30 billion) on betting games, up 38 per cent from 2003.

Punters have also been putting money down on who will succeed John Paul as pope. Italian Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi is the favourite according to both an Irish bookmaker and a US betting website. Running second with the bookmaker and the website was Nigeria?s Francis Arinze.