Saturday, June 05, 2004
Vatican's Top Latinist
The New York Times (May 29, 2004, registration required) has a portrait of the Vatican's top Latinist, Father Reginald Foster. Here are a few of his outspoken opinions:
Newer› ‹Older
To those who carp about the language's difficulty, he retorts, "Every prostitute and bum in Rome knew Latin."
"The fact that you don't have Latin, you are just sitting out there in left field," he said in an interview in his office. "You have no sense of history, no sense of continuity."
The pope, he said, "should stand up at the United Nations and speak Latin. And say, "If you don't understand this, it's too bad, jack!'"
