The term "pope" was not adopted until well after the apostolic period, thus no mention in the New Testament. Peter was considered Bishop of Rome during his lifetime. +5

+4 Good question. They regard him as being the first Bishop of Rome, which is what the Pope effectively was subsequently. In some ways it's logical that the Bishop of the biggest most important city in the western world should be the overall head of the church. . However, was Peter ever really the Bishop of Rome? The Bible doesn't say anything about this, even though all the gospels and Acts were written during or after the period when Peter was supposedly Bishop. Also, there is no definitive mention of it until well into the 3rd Century. . There's also the question of why Peter would go to Rome in the first place. Peter was supposedly the apostle to the jews. So why leave the middle east where the vast majority of Jews were located to go to Rome that had a relatively small Jewish population. . There can't have been very many Christians in Rome when Peter was supposedly Bishop. He died around 64AD, so assumimg that he would have had at least 5 years in the job, he would have arrived in Rome around 59AD. That's only 26 years after the crucifixion in a time when travel was slow and no mass communications existed. Literacy levels were very low at the time but that didn't matter because non of the gospels had been written yet.So why did Peter go there? . In all probability he didn't. His presence there is not recorded by contemporary Roman or Christian writers and the Bishop story only seems to start long after his supposed death. Matthews gospel has Jesus saying that his church would be built on Peter - the rock. But it wasn't written until about 80AD. In the centuries after Matthew the church probably wanted Rome to have the primacy so it took Matthew's statement, said that Peter was Rome's Bishop and claimed therefore that Rome was where Jesus had wanted the church to be centered.