was popular amongst believers, the cardinals were expected to try first to agree on an Italian cardinal. The election was seen as a struggle between Italian Angelo Roncalli (who was eventually elected and became Pope John XXIII) and non-Italian Agagianian. Agagianian came in second according to Massimo Faggioli and contemporary press reports. Three months after the conclave, Roncalli revealed that his name and that of Agagianian "went up and down like two chickpeas in boiling water" during the conclave. Armenian-American journalist Tom Vartabedian suggests that Agagianian may have been elected but declined the post. 1963 conclave According to John Whooley, an authority on the Armenian Catholic Church, Agagianian was considered "a strong contender, most 'papabile before the 1963 conclave and there was "much expectation" that he would be elected. The conclave instead elected Giovanni Battista Montini, who became Pope Paul VI. According to the Armenian Catholic Church website, Agagianian was rumored to have been actually elected at this conclave but declined to accept. According to speculations by Italian journalists Andrea Tornielli (1993) and Giovanni Bensi (2013) Italian intelligence services were involved in preventing Agagianian from being elected pope in 1963. They maintain that SIFAR (Servizio informazioni forze armate), the Italian military intelligence service, mounted a smear campaign against Agagianian prior to the conclave by disseminating the narrative that Agagianian's 70-year-old sister, Elizaveta—who had visited Rome a year earlier to meet him—had ties with the Soviet authorities. The Tablet wrote in 1963 that their meeting, which was preceded by negotiations partly conducted by the Italian ambassador in Moscow, "must rank as one of the best-kept diplomatic secrets of all time". Views Thomas Rausch described him as "hardly a strict traditionalist." According to Ralph M. Wiltgen, he was "regarded by the liberals as the most acceptable of the Curial cardinals" in the Second Vatican Council. In 1963 Life magazine called him a liberal, cosmopolitan, and a moderate. He was described as the Catholic Church's "topmost champion of the unity of the Christian churches under the Pope." In 1950 he issued a pastoral letter in which he directly appealed to all Armenians (most of whom adhere to the Armenian Apostolic Church) to accept the authority of the Catholic Church. On the Soviet Union During his lifetime, Agagianian was considered the Catholic Church's leading expert on communism and the Soviet Union. Norman St John-Stevas wrote 1955 that Agagianian is "uncommitted" in the Cold War.