He(Petrarch) was quite horrified at the notion, in fact he actively denounced it in certain writings. From Letter to a Friend Criticizing The Avignon Papacy

Now I am living in France, in the Babylon of the West. The sun in its travels sees nothing more hideous than this place on the shores of the wild Rhone, which suggests the hellish streams of Cocytus and Acheron. Here reign the successors of the poor fishermen of Galilee; they have strangely forgotten their origin. I am astounded, as I recall their predecessors, to see these men loaded with gold and clad in purple, boasting of the spoils of princes and nations; to see luxurious palaces and heights crowned with fortifications, instead of a boat turned downward for shelter.

If you read the whole thing, you'll see it has the same tone shown here. We can also see how much his disapproval for the Avignon Papacy, aside from calling it hideous, in that he compares it to Babylon. This is a strong reference to the Babylonian captivity in that Petrarch might have seen the Catholic Church as lost, and only able to find itself by returning to Rome. There's also a comparison between the geography of Avignon (River Rhone) to the Greek underworld with the references to the rivers Cocytus and Acheron.

Source: Petrarch: Letter Criticizing the Avignon Papacy from J. H. Robinson, Readings in European History (Boston: 1904), p. 502.