The Pope was able to create counts as a secular sovereign. Any prince, including Monaco, which is a dot on the map, can do it. A couple of non-sovereign aristocratic princes could do it if they really wanted.
The Pope created counts of the Apostolic Palace or something along those lines.
As for the Pope being capable of creating titles of the Holy Roman Empire, of which he was not the sovereign, I don’t know. Some people were able to confer Holy Roman Empire knighthoods despite not being the sovereign. Perhaps the Pope, as someone much grander than this or that head of an aristocratic family, had an imperial privilege to enable him to create counts. Such a privilege could perhaps outlive the Holy Roman Empire itself. Such oddities tend to be tolerated when it comes to titles. This is probably largely because titles are pretty much only honorary and have been so for centuries. A mediaeval count was a local kinglet, whereas even in the renaissance period he was just a rich guy with connections and a shiny title.
EDIT: That was Count of the Lateran Palace. Which would hint at the old tradition where a count, “comes” in Latin, was a companion of the monarch. In classical Latin, “comes” is a companion, by the way. This includes the guy you happen to be out hiking with.
Go here at wiki for papal counts:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_Count#Holy_See
And yes, the “Roman Count” seems to be something awardable by either the Pope or the Emperor while essentially being the same thing no matter which one of them conferred it. So perhaps the Pope was able to create Counts of the HRE.
But he would have been able to create counts of the Holy See or Papal Estates too, being a sovereign. There are funny situations with that entitlement of sovereigns sometimes, because in certain jurisdictions elected republican presidents are at least theoretically allowed to bestow noble titles, while themselves potentially being commoners.
Nowadays, as you see, the Popes tend to limit themselves to awarding orders. Orders are like medals, except they function around the traditional fiction of a knightly order with ranks, in which it differs from simply getting a more advanced version of a medal (e.g. with oak clusters or with a star). Nobility titles these days are basically medals anyway. They don’t do a thing other than making your name fancier, even if they still sometimes devolve to your offspring as their inheritance.
