The leading papabile candidates were Giovanni Battista Montini of Milan, who had not been a cardinal at the time of the previous conclave, and was supportive of reforms proposed at the Council;[1] Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna, who was considered a liberal, close to John XXIII;[1] and Giuseppe Siri of Genoa, papabile in 1958 and critical of these reforms.

[citation needed] Cardinal Gregorio Pietro Agagianian, the former Armenian Catholic Patriarch of Cilicia was also thought to be papabile.

The only two who did not were Cardinal József Mindszenty, who refused to leave the U.S. Legation in Budapest where he had lived since 1956 unless the Hungarian government met his demands for religious freedom in Hungary,[6] and Cardinal Carlos María de la Torre of Quito, Ecuador, who was 89 years old and could not make the journey because he had suffered a stroke the previous December and was bedridden with thrombosis.

[10] Some reform-minded cardinals initially voted for Leo Joseph Suenens of Mechelen-Brussels and Franz König of Vienna to make the point that the pope does not have to be Italian.

Due to the apparent deadlock, Cardinal Montini proposed to withdraw himself from being considered but was silenced by Giovanni Urbani the Patriarch of Venice.

[12] Another cardinal, Gustavo Testa, an old friend of John XXIII, lost his temper in the Chapel and demanded that the intransigents stop impeding Montini's path.