I started out by taking out the rebels in the peninsula and making potugal my ally. I got the Portugese to go to war with France, while I myself tried to maintain a status quo between portugal in France: attacking French forces outside of settlements, the portugese never seemed to be capable of making a siege succeed and thus France never got to attack me nor did Portugal grow too powerfull...I never was at a constant state of war with France though:
I would attack moving French armies, and then send an emissary to propose a caesefire, in the beginning this was pretty costly but eventually I cound get away with demanding maney for a caesefire and over time I even got them to give up Marseille and Toulouse :)

The pope never copmlained, because I never remained in a state of war with France for long, in the contrary: he eventually excomunitacted France (for going to war with the English I presume)

meanwhile my relationship with the pope was great because in concentrated the bigger part of my forces on fighting the Moors:
I completely destroyed the faction, all of North africa (Marrakesh - Alexandria) is mine, this enabeld me to have lots of priests converting people and thus becoming cardinals (all of the popes have been mine lately) + I got credit for completing 3 crusades I requested against the Moors (on Cordoba, Marrakesh and Alexandria). All of this took lots of turns though, getting a full stack organized to make the final assault on Alexandria took forever...

With this done I took the two rebel Islands of Corsica and Sardinia. The King of Sicily also died leaving no heirs, thus turning Sicily and Naples into rebel provinces which I took.
I then set my sights on
1) The still excommunicated French.
2) The scottish. The English haven't been very succesfull and merely have 3 provinces left: Wales and 2 provinces on the european mainland. So I sent 2 army's to invade Ireland and England. I took Dublin, London, York and Nottingham; then the pope told me to cease hostilities with the scottish

So now I'm about tu utterly destroy the French, who have only 2 provinces left with pretty weak garrisons in them, when that's done I'll continue my conquest of the Brittish Isles...
After that? Oh I don't know yet, maybe attack the Egytians, though I don't like going further east: I've had no trouble with the Mongols so far, and I'd like to avoid them a bit longer
On the other hand taking Jerusalem IS a campaign objective of mine, so I'll have to go there sooner or later anyway...my forces in Africa are pretty preoccupied with chasing several bands of rebels in the desert anyway.


P.S.: As for my highly succesfull campaign in North-Africa:
jinettes + artillery are absolutely superiour in the open desert