Is stopping the League War by annexing the Papal States working as designed?

[RMS Oceanic]

So it's 1599 and I have a unified protestant Italy, and it's occurred to me that despite three non-Catholic electors the League War hasn't fired, and that's pretty late. So I look up the event for clarification, and I discover that the Counter-Reformation/Council of Trent needs to have happened for the Leagues to form, and I realise that hasn't happened either. So I look it up, and for that to happen the Pope has to be alive. Which they haven't been since 1546 since I was busy unifying the peninsula. And in this timeline, no brave prince of the HRE volunteered to give up a province to the Pontifex Maximus. So no Pope, no Counter-Reformation, no League War. Is that deliberate? Because I can see some cheesy HRE strats by doing a Phillip IV to the Pope early on.

This doesn't really underline my point, except to prove I haven't gotten Council of Trent yet, I just liked showing off.

 

[grotaclas]

There is a failsafe for this case in common/on_actions/00_on_actions.txt:

on_five_year_pulse_4 = {
    if = { #fail-safe for flavor_pap.7, making religious leagues happen at some point if there is no PAP
        limit = {
            is_year = 1610
            NOT = { exists = PAP }
            NOT = { has_global_flag = counter_reformation }
        }
        set_global_flag = counter_reformation
    }

So the league war can still happen in your game.

 

[RMS Oceanic]

Ah, cool. Means I don't have to worry (as much) about picking apart the empire.