with his "reputation for being broad-minded and conciliatory". He also represented a combination of diplomatic and pastoral experience. Gregorio Pietro Agagianian, the Catholic Armenian Patriarch of Cilicia, had spent much of his adult life in Rome. He was relatively young at 63 and highly respected, but his non-Italian heritage would have made him a surprising choice. Other candidates mentioned were Ernesto Ruffini of Palermo; and two curia officials, Valerio Valeri and Alfredo Ottaviani. Benedetto Masella, the 79-year-old chosen as camerlengo on 9 October, a veteran diplomat, was also mentioned as a compromise candidate with "his chances diminished because of his age". Also mentioned as a radical departure from tradition was Giovanni Battista Montini, Archbishop of Milan, whom Pius had not made a cardinal. The New York Times cast a wide net, offering more than a dozen names, including two non-Italians, Paul-Émile Léger of Montreal and Manuel Goncalves Cerejeira of Lisbon. Life magazine's coverage included portraits of Agagianian, Lercaro, Montini, Ottaviani, Roncalli, Ruffini, Siri, and Valeri. As the press speculated about interest in a transitional pope and possible discussions among the cardinal electors, the Vatican's mouthpiece Osservatore Romano denounced the "irresponsible lightness" with which the press approached the subject, especially its reports of electioneering. A Moscow radio broadcast criticized Pius for meddling in politics and hoped for a new pope devoted instead to "religious problems". Betting establishments reported Roncalli was favored by their clients, given 2 to 1 odds. By the second day of the conclave, after four ballots produced no results, speculation centered on Roncalli, Valeri, Masella, and Agagianian, the first three elderly and the last an unlikely outsider. Participants Pope Pius XII tried in the consistory of 1953 to bring the membership of the College of Cardinals to the maximum of 70, the limit established by Pope Sixtus V in the sixteenth century. On that occasion he named 24 cardinals. When one cardinal-designate, Carlo Agostini, died on 28 December at the age of 64, the Vatican announced another cardinal designate the next day, Valerian Gracias of India, so the College reached its full complement of 70 members, with 26 of them Italian. Deaths in the intervening five years, including those of Celso Costantini on 17 October and Edward Mooney of Detroit on 25 October just hours before the start of the conclave, had reduced the College to 53 members. József Mindszenty feared the Communist government of Hungary would not