FOUR NAMES MENTIONED

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28728, 28 October 1958, Page 11

FOUR NAMES MENTIONED

Trend Seen In Voting (Rec. 9.40 p.m.) VATICAN CITY, October 27. A report to the “New York Times” from Rome said that most ecclesiastics and informed laymen in the Vatican predicted last night that one of three aged Italian cardinals or the Patriarch of the Armenians would become the next Supreme Pontiff. It was thought that scattered votes had been cast in yesterday’s balloting for: Angelo Giuseppe Cardinal Roncalli, the 76-year-old Patriarch of Venice. Valero Cardinal Valeri, aged 74, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation of Religious. Benedetto Cardinal Aloisi Masella, aged 79, Cardinal Camerlengo, or Chamberlain. Gregory Peter XV Cardinal Agagianian, Patriarch of the Armenians in communion with the Holy See. Cardinal Agagianian, who was 63, was a Russian who had spent most of his adult life in Rome. The Sacred College would be most likely to elevate one of the first three, it was said, if it intended the next Pontificate to be a period of transition from the towering personality of Pius XII to a traditional pattern of administration. The main task of a “transition” Pope would be to restore normality in church government by filling the many posts, including 17 Cardinalates, left vacant by Pope Pius. Cardinals Roncalli, Valeri and Aloisi Masella were regarded as compromise candidates because they were believed capable of reconciling various tendencies known to exist within the Sacred College. Cardinal Agagianian. who was Pro-Prefect of the SaCred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, was thought to be a compromise candidate in another sense. His election would make it easier for the Curia, or Vatican Administration, to serve under a Pope if the Sacred College decided to depart from a tradition, going back to the Renaissance, that in effect reserved the papacy to Italians.