There aren’t many jobs where mastery of a dead language is an asset. But when Giovanna Chirri, Vatican correspondent for Italy’s ANSA news agency, heard Pope Benedict make an announcement in Latin earlier this month, she understood completely, and raced to break the story: The pope was resigning. Meanwhile, many of the assembled cardinals, it was reported, were left scratching their heads. Their Latin skills weren’t up to snuff.
It took the first papal resignation in six centuries to thrust Latin—as a live, spoken language—back into the news. Beyond the extremely rare circumstance of major world religious leaders announcing their retirement, however, you might well wonder: Who still speaks the language of ancient Rome outside of the Vatican walls? In this day and age, what would be the point?
Comments
When church services are held in Swahili , Bhasha Indonesia and Arabic why not Vatican nation switch its official language to English. It is one of the way to bring the fleeing flock home!!
As our illustrious former vice president dan quale once said. " I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret i have was that I did not study latin harder in school so i could converse with these people."
The only other people that speak latin are the people of latin america.