Does His Holiness the Pope the Vicar of Christ ever excommunicate rulers himself?

[Gunnarr]

Does the Pope ever excommunicate rules just because they have the sinful traits/bad relations?
Or does it always require someone else asking for the ruler to be excommunicated?

Also, does the pope ever declare war on neighboring countries who are weak, as in, does he ever act like a normal ai country or is it coded so he does not try to attack other countries besides in crusades?

More questions:

Is the Pope ever invaded by other catholic countries?
Does the AI ever do antipopes? If they can, have you ever seen it?

PS

Please do not take offence to the title of this thread ;P

ANOTHER QUESTION:

Why does the Pope not lose authority by, say, being very sinful (like having... 5 of the deadly sins traits!)He always seems to have 100 authority after 50 years

 

[tormos]

I'm not sure about your first question. In response to the latter, it's based on his diplomacy stat and the success of catholic holy wars (which give +/- 1 on victory/surrender). In historical terms, the idea of papal legitimacy survived a fairly long series of popes in the error who were, to put it kindly, not obvious candidates for sainthood. the only way that catholicism is likely to lose serious legitimacy is a long term anti-pope or a serious, long term, military reverse for his coreligionists. Again, historically, the parallel is the brief crises over certain papal elections which all corresponded with a serious crisis for papal power (moreso than individual bad popes)

 

[Lord Finnish]

I have been excommunicated a few times as a king or emperor. All you need is to have crappy relations with the Pope and piss off someone.