I am playing as the English on m/vh and I am on turn 75, having eliminated Scotland, France, Milan, Portugal, and I have Spain and Denmark on the ropes. I'm pretty much at war with everybody except maybe Poland and Hungary.

The pope waited until my last King was pushing his mid 60's to demand that he go on a crusade. Damn, if Sicily didn't beat me to Jerusalem, and my king
succumbed to his life long battle with severe flatulence just as his army disembarked at the city's port. Now I have a leaderless army in the middle of the "oh so friendly" middle East--nice! (The Mongols are also there by the way)

The real problem is that I have absolutely no cardinals, and it's been that way for at least the last 40 turns or so. I am sure I had one or two early on, but I guess they died, and since then all the priests I keep pumping out seem to be relegated to being low level child molesters in the backwater provinces.

I have churches in all my provinces plus a couple of abbey's, and I'm building a cathedral in Paris. In addition, I have been pumping out all the Catholic pedophiles I can.

I dominate the world presently with population, military might, and held lands, but my rating on the Pope-o-meter is always the lowest and is constantly on the decline because I can't seem to get any one promoted to cardinal.

I put 5 or 6 assassins around Rome and I keep offing the Popster, but that does me absolutely no good since I have no voting privileges, and the next guy to get the pointy hat is usually just another one of my enemies.

Heck, I might as well just get ex-communicated, so I can quit worrying about it.

Anyone else experience this?