Part of my “Something You Might Find Interesting” bulletin series at Visitation.
Sunday, March 23, 2025
When I lived in Rome, our group’s chaplain would take our group of seminarians to little hole-in-the-wall restaurants throughout the city. One evening, our group boarded a bus near the Vatican and the priest with us excitedly greeted someone he knew. The person, he explained later, was an American priest working in the Roman Curia, the administrative section of the Vatican. The two friends greeted each other warmly on the bus, but the other priest had a furrowed brow; something was wrong. Our chaplain and his friend then launched into a full conversation, in Italian, and we seminarians were eager to try our Italian eavesdropping skills…but we quickly realized the two were not speaking Italian but were in fact having a full conversation in lingua Latina! When we asked about it later, our chaplain confirmed our suspicion: Vatican business is not meant for eavesdropping seminarians!
Sometimes we refer to Latin as a “dead language.” Scholars of linguistics and anthropology define a dead language loosely as those languages which are no longer in everyday use (the Oxford dictionary uses Latin as an example of this, but my experience on the bus proves otherwise) or more rigidly as a language with no living native speakers. From this perspective, Latin isn’t dead but merely “dormant.”
But! What if I told you that Latin was neither dead nor dormant, and while there are technically no “native” speakers of Latin, the Latin language continues to adapt and grow even today?
Italian is the official language for the business of the Vatican City State, but Latin remains the official language of the Church. As such, all papal and liturgical documents are published first in Latin as an official edition, and then translated into the various languages. There is even a Latin X (formerly known as Twitter) account for Pope Francis, @pontifex_ln. All of these projects are the work of the Latin Letters Office inside the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
As papal writings have changed with the times, incorporating modern ideas, words, and cultural themes, so to has the Latin language evolved to keep up with these changes. In 1976, Pope Paul VI authorized the Vatican’s Latin Foundation, which was given a monumental task: create and publish the Lexicon Recentis Latinitatis, or the Lexicon of Recent Latin Words. This dictionary is constantly updated and is available on the Vatican website.
Check out this dictionary, and see if some of your new favorite words might be found there. Here are some of mine:
Bartender - tabernae potoriae minister, literally “Tavern Minister”
Basketball - follis canistrique Iudus, “Game with Ball and Basket”
Check-Up - totius corporis inspectio, a “whole body inspection”
Flirt - amor levis, “smooth lover”
Golf - thorax láneus manicatus, which translates literally to “long-sleeve sweater”…think of what your grandpa would wear on the course!
Jeep - autocinētum locis iniquis aptum, literally “automobile suited for uneven places”
Popcorn - maizae grana tosta or “hot grains of corn”
Shampoo - capitilavium, literally “head cleaner”
Read through the Dictionary online, and break some of these out at your next dinner party. People will think you are truly a persona hilares.