160th Pope of the Catholic Church. Pontificate 1099 - 1118. His reign of almost twenty years was exceptionally long for a Pope of the Middle Ages. Pope Paschal II ordered the building of the a basilica of Santi Quattro Coronati on the ashes of the one burned during the Norman sack of Rome in 1084. Paschal also appointed the first bishop of America nearly four centuries before Columbus' first voyage across the Atlantic. Erik Gnupsson was given the province of Greenland and Vinland, the latter believed to refer to what is now Newfoundland.