Video footage of Pope Francis holding a bottle of scotch and calling it "the real water of life" was censored by the Vatican ahead of a new documentary.

The clip featured the head of the Catholic Church accepting a bottle of Oban malt from a group of Scottish student priests at a reception at the Vatican's Apostolic Palace last year.

But Vatican media insisted Il Papa's quip was cut from the film, about seminarians at the Scots College in Rome, before broadcast this Sunday.

Director Tony Kearney, whose Solus Productions made the one-hour documentary Priest School, which followed the Scots seminarians over 18 months in 2018 and 2019, Daily Record reports.

He said: "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.