Suppose you need cash while you’re visiting the Vatican. You walk up to an ATM and discover the word “Salve” on the screen. Maybe it won’t surprise you at first, because you might assume it’s Italian.
But it’s not Italian. It’s Latin.
It seems crazy to think that one of the world’s ancient tongues—the language of the Roman Empire, the language of scholars, the language that bridged the gap between nationalities in the Church—is encoded into a modern machine.
ATMs reached the Vatican in the early 2000s, during the pontificate of Benedict XVI.
Perhaps Benedict’s appreciation for the sacred language of the Church encouraged Fr. Reginald Foster—the Vatican’s prime Latin scholar, known as “the Latin-lover”—to promote the daily use of Latin in the Vatican.
In any case, Fr. Foster is credited with making Latin the primary tongue of the Vatican ATMs.
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