The beast is not the Pope,for he does not qualify to be the beast,the man of sin.
The man of sin will not be involved with anything that has to do with competition among humans,for it is beneath him,and a hindrance to his agenda to be unique,and greater than any human ever in the history of mankind.
He is only concerned with being the New Age Christ,and ruling the world,and will come in with a bang and establish peace in the Middle East,and work from there doing things that have not been done before,and saying things that have not been said before,for he will understand dark sentences.
He will do what no man has done in the world before,which there has been many Popes,and his position he is going for there is no competition for he is the only one to ever have that position.
The first beast does not come out of Islam,and Islam will fall and be devastated before the beast claims to be God.
Daniel had a vision of 4 kingdoms,Babylon,Medo-Persia,Greece,and the Roman Empire.
The first 3 kingdoms will never have dominion again,but the Roman Empire does not lose their dominion until God puts them down,which ten horns come from them,which is the world split in to ten sections with a leader in each section,and the little horn,the beast,comes from the ten horns,so the beast comes from the Roman Empire.
The Bible says the prince to come,the beast in the future,comes from the people who overthrew Jerusalem which is the Roman Empire.
Since the Roman Empire does not lose their dominion until God puts them down,the Pope will be the second beast,and false prophet,and the Vatican as the headquarters,and the Pope as the spiritual leader,of a unified religious system,before the beast claims to be God.
Then when the ten horns hand their power over to the beast,they will do away with the unified religious system,Mystery Babylon,for they have no need of her anymore.