Pope Francis was caught on video proclaiming that Scotch whisky is “the real holy water” — a good-spirited joke to a group of visiting Scottish student priests who presented him with a bottle.
But the Vatican sought to avoid a brew-haha by censoring the footage ahead of an upcoming documentary about seminarians at the Scot College in Rome, according to the Scottish Daily Record.
The video showed the 83-year-old pontiff accepting the bottle of Oban 14 malt from the students during an event at the Apostolic Palace last year, but Vatican media said the clip in question has been cut from the one-hour BBC documentary “Priest School,” which will air Sunday.
“We filmed the students meeting with the pope in the Apostolic Palace. One of them was tasked with giving the pope a bottle of malt, because they know he likes whisky,” said Tony Kearney, director of the film, which followed the seminarians for 18 months.
“He was really down to earth with them all and when they handed him the bottle, instead of just handing it to his assistant as he normally would with a gift, he held it up and said, ‘Questa e la vera acqua santa,’ which means ‘This is the real holy water,’” Kearney told the outlet.
“He guffawed with laughter and it was a real ice-breaker with the students and put everyone at ease,” he continued.
“But we’d agreed that the Vatican’s media office would be allowed to approve all of our footage before we broadcast it. So we sent them the files and when they sent it back, that bit of him saying that was cut out,” Kearney added.
“We were really annoyed at first, but they insisted they didn’t want the pope to be seen to be endorsing whisky. I think it’s quite funny how guarded his image is,” he said.
“Francis is ripping up the rule book, he’s ahead of the curve, and the flunkies around about him need to catch up,” said Kearney, who called the seminarians “ordinary blokes who like a drink, like the football and live ordinary lives.”
It appears that Francis may indeed enjoy a drink every once in a while, according to a report in Forbes.
Last year, the Dundee Courier reported that Scottish priest Jim Wallis met the pope shortly after becoming the spiritual director at the Pontifical Scots College in 2018, according to Forbes.
Joined by a group of Scottish bishops, they presented Francis with a bottle of whisky.
“It was a great honor to go into the Vatican and go to the chamber to meet the pope and he came out and shook all of our hands. Then we presented him with a bottle of whisky and he looked at it and said, ‘Ha ha, that’s holy water!’ He’s obviously been gifted some whisky before,” Wallis said.
In fact, Queen Elizabeth II gave the pope a bottle of Scotch when they first met in 2014, the news outlet reported.