The Pope's Latinist
A Biography of Fr. Reginald Foster, OCD
The Paideia Institute Press is pleased to announce that The Pope's Latinist, a biography of Fr. Reginald Foster, O.C.D. by John Byron Kuhner, is now available for preorder!
Preorders will ship the week of December 14th.
(Hardcover, $35)
(PDF preview coming soon)
Overview
Enter the heart of the Vatican, where a peculiar group of priests awaited the pope’s beck and call. When Fr. Reginald Foster arrived here in 1969, these men had the strangest task in the world’s strangest country: writing the official pronouncements of the pope in Latin, and preserving the language of Caesar and Cicero as the working language of the Roman Catholic Church.
These Latin secretaries counted among their ranks saints and scholars, poets and humanists. They never imagined an American could do the job—until Foster arrived. He would become one of the most colorful characters in Vatican history—a lover of poverty, he dressed like a plumber and was sometimes mistaken for a homeless man. “Amid the glories of Rome,” said one bishop, “he walked the streets like St. Francis.”
The Pope’s Latinist is a life of a Milwaukee altar boy who would become Latin’s greatest champion—and one of the Vatican’s least diplomatic critics. It is also a history of the modern Church, told from inside the Apostolic Palace: a tale of Latin’s extraordinary fall from grace and a record of Rome’s enduring literary, religious, and cultural vitality.
About the Author
John Byron Kuhner first studied with Reginald Foster in 1995 and would return to Foster’s classroom repeatedly. (This photo was taken at Horace's Villa in 1998.)
After years teaching Latin, he wrote Staten Island, Or, Life in the Boroughs and moved to a cabin in the Catskill Mountains. He now runs a bookshop in Steubenville with his wife and five children.
Further Reading
John has written about Reginaldus for years, and interviewed him extensively before his death in 2020:
- The Vatican’s Latinist — The New Criterion, 2017
- The Continuing Fascination of Fr. Reginald Foster — In Medias Res, September 2018
- Remembering Fr. Reginald Foster (1939–2020) — First Things, December 2020
- The Funeral of Fr. Reginald Foster, O.C.D. — In Medias Res, January 2021