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Shortly after midnight on Christmas, Father Reginald Foster, papal Latinist for 40 years and the world s foremost Latin teacher, died at the age of 81 at St. Anne s Home in Milwaukee.
I had the privilege to be his student for four years in Rome, from 1995-99. While some of the great teachers I ve had in life because of the subject matter like moral theology have had a more life-changing impact on me, Father Foster, or Reggie as he wanted to be called, was without a doubt my greatest classroom teacher. He took what in many places is an arid subject and made it absolutely enthralling and did so in the early afternoons, when the sleep-inducing insulin spikes of big Italian lunches were at their strongest. He was infectiously entertaining, funny, and eccentric, with a comedian s sense of timing and perspective coupled to 2,000 years of Latin humor.