12 . 28 . 20
On December 25, shortly after midnight, while Catholics all over the Midwest were attending midnight mass, Fr. Reginald Thomas Foster, O.C.D., passed away in a Milwaukee nursing home, just a few miles from where he had been born 81 years before. He had earlier tested positive for COVID-19. On his long circular journey back to his origin, the man who would become the world’s foremost authority on the Latin language, as well as Latinist to four popes over four decades, led one of this era’s most interesting and unusual Catholic lives and inspired thousands to love and study Latin.