The existence of the Pope is inherent in the need for doctrinal and disciplinary unity. Otherwise when there's a dispute over whether to obey a pastor or whether he's correct about something in faith or morals, there's no arbiter, so the church splits in two, and it continues on the pattern of cancer. Naturally there will be faithless people in the church who use such positions as if they were political, but only because "if there is no resurrection, then let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" and politics is the most obvious way of ensuring that luxury.
Fallen human nature and all its corrupt motives accounts for that. The most obvious being that a good number of religious leaders have no interest in truth and are fine with causing division as long as it profits them.
