Love of pasta making Pope pile on the pounds!

Pope Francis has been reportedly told by Vatican doctors to cut back on the pasta after gaining weight.

The 78-year-old Argentine pontiff has appeared noticeably more upholstered during public appearances over the past few months, with doctors ascribing the weight gain to too much spaghetti and ravioli and not enough exercise, Stuff.co.nz reported.

Doctors stated that the Pope needed to adopt a more "disciplined" regimen in order to try to combat the stress and strain he faced as the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.

Medics wanted to take no chances with the 78-year-old's state of health, particularly after he said recently that because of his advanced age he had an intuition that his papacy would be a short one.

The Pope, who has only one fully functioning lung, takes no holidays, deals with an enormous amount of correspondence and has embarked on reform of the Vatican's murky financial institutions.