Pius iii had been elected precisely because he was ill and would probably not live long , and thus his election guaranteed a brief reign while the two most important factions in the college of cardinals , spain and france , could come to some agreement on a real choice .
A friend , j. pius barbour , remembered the young seminarian arguing on behalf of gandhian methods with a reckoning based on arithmetic-that any minority would be outnumbered if it turned to a policy of violence-rather than on principle .