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Father Reginald Foster, exuberant figure in Vatican life who was Latinist to four popes – obituary
He translated papal writings from Italian into Latin and devised new Latin words for modern phenomena from Twitter to hot dogs
30 December 2020 • 2:09pm
Reginald Foster: he did not charge students for lessons and they soon warmed to his eccentric but rigorous teaching style
Credit: Chris Warde-Jones
Father Reginald Foster, who died on Christmas Day aged 81, was the Roman Catholic Church’s greatest post-war Latin specialist; for 40 years he translated Vatican documents into the ancient tongue and he served as Latin secretary to four popes.
Following the Second Vatican Council, Foster (a Carmelite priest) mounted a brave and eloquent, if ultimately futile, protest against the marginalisation of Latin. He condemned the growing ignorance of the language in the upper echelons of the Church, and argued with considerable ingenuity that there was a place for Latin in the modern wor