Quote Originally Posted by macsen rufus
I usually see him come back in both provinces, and my usual strategy is to defend Rome, and abandon Papal States (usually with very little infrastructure ), then I attack Papal States and once he's besieged, I withdraw - autoceasefire with a very weakened Papacy who is now my poodle.
That usually does the trick but not always as I have just learnt recently.

Pope started the usual war with the Sicilian who had taken Rome and were besieging the Pope in his Papal States castle. Being a good catholic (and the onwer of North Italy with a strong dislike for unavoidable papal re-emergence), I thought I would lend a helping hand to my ally. I thus kikced the Sicilians out of Rome (which I kept for myself) and the Papal States which was returned to His Holiness. Sicilian ships were bugging me and disturbing my trade routes so that I could not resist the temptation to get Naples and Sicily and wipe them out. All pink and rosy to that point since the Pope was still alive without being any kind of threat (I had only all the troops that can stand in a wooden fort so a bit less than 200 probably). Few years later the Pope cancelled his alliance with and I could not care less. Still a few years later that idiot managed to get a peasant revolt and found itself besieged by the rebels (400 troops max). In order to avoid excom, I send a bishop to suggest an alliance so that I could dislodge the rebels without being excommed (Thought I could do that cause the keep would hold for at least three years before falling). What went wrong was not that the rebels assaulted the keep, not that my alliance offer was turned down but that the silly sicilians took that one year delay to reappear with about four thousand quality troops (feudal knights, CMAA, CS, etc) ... I had planned enough troops to deal with 400 rebels and not enough to successfully attack that many troops (especially given the unfair rule that makes the human player act as an attacker when the same province is simultaneously attacked by an AI faction). The Sicilian killed the Pope and guess what happened three years later in Rome after I had just managed to repell the Sicilians' attempt to come out of the Papal States ... Morality: try to make sure that the Pope is confined to the Papal States but leave him with enough troops to avoid rebellions whatever the tax rate he selects ....