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Ultimately, answering this question will largely depend on the tradition and perspective you are approaching it from. There are substantial resources in the Roman Catholic Tradition to assert that the primacy of Peter and thus the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was instituted by Christ at the time of Peter’s confession of faith and then preserved thereafter, making Peter the first pope. Catholics do claim that an unbroken line of succession can be traced from Peter to the present day pope. There is at least some indication that several of the early church fathers assented to and perpetuated belief in the primacy of the Roman Bishop, though many Protestant scholars have found counter-evidence among Patristic texts which challenges such a belief. This, of course, undermines that support of the pontificate was unanimous among the early church and that a hierarchal hierarchical structure with a central figurehead, the pope, was probable. Thus, acknowledgement of Peter as the first pope largely depends on what Patristic authors are given preference and how one interprets Matthew 16.