The Pope Cannot Live outside of Rome. If We Are to Have a True Pope, He Has to Be the Bishop of Rome and Live in Rome.

This objection is answered very simply by the historical fact of the Avignon papacies. As French Catholic priest and historian Guillaume Mollat wrote:

“Between 1305 and 1378 seven popes succeeded one another on the throne of St Peter and lived, more or less continuously, in Avignon, on the banks of the Rhone. Was it an unheard-of occurrence and in fact a ‘scandal’ in the annals of the Church for them to reside outside Rome? The majority of non-French writers, from Platina onwards, seem to suggest it. Yet, for all they were bishops of Rome, a large number of the popes were elected and crowned elsewhere than at Rome and governed the world from some place other than Rome. During the latter half of the thirteenth century their subjects’ unrest made it impossible for the popes to reside in the Eternal City and they were obliged to emigrate, to such an extent that it became exceptional for them to live in Rome...

Martin IV (1281-5), a Frenchman, elected at Viterbo, ubi tunc residebat Romana Curia, never went outside Tuscany and Umbria...

Alexander IV (1254-61) was elected and crowned at Naples…” [1]

From these brief passages we can therefore see that not only did seven legitimate popes reside outside of Rome but some were also legitimately elected outside of Rome, whilst still being bishops of Rome.

Moreover, Pope Nicholas II made this possibility explicit in 1059 in the papal bull In nomine Domini:

“...if the perversity of depraved and wicked men shall so prevail that a pure, sincere and free election cannot be held in Rome, the cardinal bishops, with the clergy of the church and the catholic laity, may have the right and power, even though few in numbers, of electing a pontiff for the apostolic see wherever it may seem to them most suitable.” [2]

Therefore, we can conclude from papal decree and historical fact that it is not necessary for popes to either reside in, nor be validly elected, in Rome.