Yes, the pope always comes back to life quite forcefully and unlike other factions it doesn´t matter whether loyalty in Rome is 200% in your favour or not, he´ll come back anyways after some time. And he never seems to be able to keep his fingers from the provinces around after some time of waiting.
He must be pretty wealthy on his comebacks, too, because I reduced Rome to rabble, but a couple of years later he had built up a basic infrastructure, despite having to fund this huge army of his.