December 29, 2020
CWN Editor s Note: Father Foster, who died on Christmas Day, served four popes as the Vatican’s foremost Latin authority.
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Famous for his homework sheets created on a manual typewriter, Father Reginald Foster is seen working in his Vatican office in this January 2007 file photo. The famed teacher of Latin died Dec. 25, 2020, in Milwaukee, Wis. (CNS photo/Chris Warde-Jones)
From 1982 to 1987, I studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, doing first a licentiate degree and then a doctorate. My first semester was daunting. I had six courses, all taught in Italian, all lengthy lectures, each with anywhere from 50 to 200 students in the class, with nary a hand raised or a question asked. Only once in a rare moment did any professor ever invoke a concrete example of whatever he (yes, all were “he”) was teaching.
Reginald Foster, Vatican Latinist Who Tweeted in the Language, Dies at 81
One of the world’s foremost experts on Latin, Father Foster was a monk who looked like a stevedore, dressed like a janitor and swore like a sailor.
Reginald Foster in 2004 in his office in Rome. “You do not need to be mentally excellent to know Latin,” he once said. “Prostitutes, beggars and pimps in Rome spoke Latin, so there must be some hope for us.”Credit.Chris Warde-Jones
Published Dec. 27, 2020Updated Dec. 28, 2020
Reginald Foster, a former plumber’s apprentice from Wisconsin who, in four decades as an official Latinist of the Vatican, dreamed in Latin, cursed in Latin, banked in Latin and ultimately tweeted in Latin, died on Christmas Day at a nursing home in Milwaukee. He was LXXXI.
Death of legendary Latinist leaves the Church a grayer place
Father Reggie Foster was living proof that being indispensable is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.
ROME – When I first arrived in Rome to cover the Vatican in the 1990s, every time I’d meet an English-speaker around town, sooner or later they’d all ask the same question, inevitably with an amused twinkle in their eye: “Have you met Reggie Foster yet?”
They’d tell me he was the pope’s Latinist, which didn’t exactly seem to make meeting him the most riveting prospect. At first I thought maybe it was some kind of nerdy ex-pat form of hazing, to gaslight the new guy into meeting the biggest bore around just for kicks.
December 28, 2020
CWN Editor s Note: The New York Times, Vatican News, and Crux also paid tribute to the Discalced Carmelite priest, who died on Christmas Day after contracting Covid.
The above note supplements, highlights, or corrects details in the original source (link above). About CWN news coverage.
Sound Off! CatholicCulture.org supporters weigh in.
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Posted by: rfr46 - Dec. 28, 2020 8:37 AM ET USA
For many years, Father Reginald Foster had a weekly program on Vatican Radio, entitled The Latin Lover. My wife and I always looked forward to it. He was entertaining, opinionated, slightly irreverent and always good-humored and kindly toward the interviewer. Never a dull moment! His knowledge of Latin was astonishing, and I was always tempted t