http://www.smash.com/seg/timelab/stories/005pope.html
COFFEE AND THE POPE
When you drink your morning coffee tomorrow… say thanks to the pope who made it all possible.
People began going crazy over coffee 600 years ago in the Middle East. The earliest coffee fanatics were Muslim mystics, trying to stay awake for nighttime worship.
Early coffee houses were such "brewing grounds" for radical ideas that authorities in Mecca tried to outlaw the drink!
When coffee hit Europe in the late fifteen hundreds, priests at the Vatican labeled it an atheist concoction and wanted it banned there too!
That's when Pope Clement 8th gave his blessing to the bean. "This Satan's drink is so delicious… " he is quoted as saying, "we shall cheat Satan by baptizing it."
Many of us still view coffee as a kind of holy water… and wouldn't think of starting the morning… or a new millennium… without it!