Yes, it seems that the pope is more eyeing the price of coins that are still low to be manipulated,
because as you said that with the high price I think they will consider a lot of things to manipulate Bitcoin,
other than that maybe the pope wouldn't go that far
It's the marketcap + liquidity, not the price. Cardano has a low unit price of $1.04(as of today) but it has quite a high marketcap and a good amount of liquidity; compared to a lowcap coin that could be priced at $100+(because of low supply).