Most amusing is the heated debate between the Roman Catholic Church and Mexican parishioners over the propriety of drinking chocolate in church. Chocolate had enough regard for its medicinal properties that ladies attending church claimed that drinking it during church services kept their frail bodies awake during long sermons and staved off fainting spells. Church officials, however, viewed the sybaritic drink as an indulgence, and most importantly, a violation of the fast laws. The issue eventually escalated all the way to the Vatican, which shrewdly resolved the matter in 1662, when Pope Alexander VII proclaimed that liquids did not break the fast.