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From https://www.the74million.org/article/50-years-after-latin-disappeared-from-high-school-classrooms-these-educators-are-bringing-it-back/

50 Years After Latin Disappeared from High School Classrooms, These Educators Are Bringing It Back
by Kevin Mahnken
December 6, 2017

When Father Reginald Foster was chosen to serve as the Vatican’s Latinist, translating the pope’s correspondence and decrees into the Church’s mother tongue, he couldn’t foresee the ancient language’s approaching decline.

...Today, although Latin is still commonplace in papal writings, it is not a fixture of religious life or education. Foster, who served under four popes, presided over a period of sagging Latin usage that only now shows signs of passing. As one step toward arresting the decline, the Pontifical Academy of Latin, established in 2012 with the explicit purpose of preserving the language’s place in the modern world, is awarding a 20,000-euro prize for innovations in Latin instruction.

Now living in a retirement home in his native Milwaukee, where he still works with students at all levels of experience, Foster is not sanguine about the future of his discipline or the Church’s latest attempts to revive it. “To get down now and start a whole new generation of people speaking Latin … I don’t know, it’s probably impossible.”

Not everyone shares his pessimism. After a long phase of disuse in the late 20th century, Latin enrollment has stabilized over the past few decades, and a cadre of young educators — Foster’s own students among them — are devising new methods to dust off the language of the Romans.

Read the full article at https://www.the74million.org/article/50-years-after-latin-disappeared-from-high-school-classrooms-these-educators-are-bringing-it-back/