POPE FRANCIS has been known to enjoy an occasional drink now and then.
In 2016 he famously declared: "Water is needed to live, but wine expresses the abundance of the banquet and joy of the celebration."
More recently, he paid a special visit to a brewery in Messina set up by a group of 15 local residents.
But you have to go back a little further to find an alcoholic beverage that received the Pope's official blessing.
Back to the 17th century, to be precise.
It was then that the Paulaner monks of Bavaria in Germany decided to brew up a special beer to help them get through their upcoming 40-day Lenten fast.
Making beer wasn't a particularly unusual practice among monks, who often raised funds through the brewing and selling of such alcoholic beverages.
And with food prohibited during lent, beer provided the necessary sustenance to help the monks endure 40 days without food, earning the nickname 'liquid bread' in the process.
The beer brewery by these Paulaner monks was something special though.
Boasting a dark brown colour, doppelbock was surprisingly sweet and noticeably strong, with an alcohol content ranging between 7% and 12% by volume.
What the Paulaner monks created, instead, was a brew that came to be known as doppelbock or Salvator, which translates literally as Savior.
Worried that their delicious doppelbock no longer qualified as a Lenten sacrifice, the monks decided to ship some Salvator to Rome in order to receive papal approval.
What they never counted on, however, was that the beer they sent would end up getting spoiled during the arduous trip from Germany to Italy.
When the Salvator finally reached the Pope, he was impressed - anyone willing to drink such a disgusting tasting beer must be strong of faith.
The monks were given the all-clear to drink the beer and continued to do so in the centuries that followed.
Doppelbock is still brewed to this day at the centuries-old Paulaner brewery in Munich and is a popular choice among beer connoisseurs the world over.
The Lord truly works in mysterious ways.
