Vatican Priest Gives Two-Part Latin Seminar
This past Monday and Tuesday, the classics department hosted Monsignor Daniel Gallagher, a priest from the Office of Latin Letters at the Vatican Secretariat of State. During his visit, Gallagher gave a two-part lunch seminar during which he offered students a glimpse into his life as a Vatican Latinist and discussed how speaking and writing Latin can help in the reading of classical texts.
The first part of the seminar, entitled “Latin in the Vatican,” explored Gallagher’s role in the Office of Latin Letters, where he is responsible for everything the Pope communicates in Latin (the official language of the Catholic Church), including a wide range of documents, letters and media; the Pope’s Twitter account is one example. The second part of the seminar, “Loquamur Latine,” gave students the opportunity to experience Latin as a spoken language through a hands-on workshop followed by an introduction to the art of tweeting in Latin.
Gallagher began his study of Latin at the University of Michigan before going on to complete degrees in philosophy at the Catholic University of America and in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Now a priest of the Diocese of Gaylord, he currently works in the Office of Latin Letters at the Vatican Secretariat of State where Latin is spoken and written on a daily basis. “I never expected I would actually be writing it for a job,” Gallagher explained, “but that’s where the path led me, and I’m happy to be doing it.”
During Exeter’s 2014 winter term abroad in Rome, Gallagher hosted Exonians in the Apostolic Palace and demonstrated the work he did for the Pope. Students on the trip cited this session as a highlight. However, Gallagher was not in the Vatican during the 2016 spring break Rome trip but rather on sabbatical in the United States, so he was invited to come to Exeter instead.
“He definitely left me feeling inspired to continue my study of Latin, to continue working on composition and eager to explore some of the new methods of learning that he suggested.”
In his visit, Gallagher hoped to inform students about how the Vatican works and the way Latin is used as a living language there. While acknowledging that it is an ancient language, he drew attention to the fact that “it’s very much alive in the sense that we can speak it and write it like we can any other language.” Gallagher went on to explain how this realization can help students develop the confidence to delve deeply into classical texts, know that it is good to wrestle with them. “My hope, and my conviction because I’ve seen it happen, is that students are never just doing Latin passively,” he stated. “They can actively engage with the texts, ask questions about it, converse about anything they want in Latin, and by doing that they’re actually enhancing all the other skills.”
With this in mind, Gallagher also had a chance to speak with the classics department about some techniques that it could use to increase the focus on conversational Latin as a part of instruction. He modeled those techniques in several classes throughout his visit. According to chair of the classical languages department Nicholas Unger, “Father Gallagher showed us how speaking and writing Latin could help you read Latin better, and that important insight will certainly inform our department as we examine our curriculum.”
Unger went on to describe Gallagher’s job as “the coolest job in the world,” pointing out that very few people get to speak Latin every day, write a letter to President Obama in Latin and compose Latin tweets that reach an audience of over half a million people. Unger added that “now, whenever someone tells you Latin is dead, you can say, ‘Well, actually...’”
Upper Tyler Hou was equally impressed with Gallagher’s work. “It was pretty cool to see someone who is essentially fluent in Latin,” he said. “[IIt was] potentially beneficial to my studies to see how he thinks we should improve our knowledge of Latin through composition and speaking.” However, Hou believes that the classics department has always had a “conversational approach” to Latin, listing Latin Conversational Club as an example of this in addition to Unger’s frequent use of Latin to address his classes.
Senior Grace Stinson, who first met Gallagher in Rome when he gave a tour of his office and job, said she “really enjoyed both of his seminars.” Likewise, upper Bliss Perry found the seminars “highly interesting and engaging, as usual for the classics department’s guest scholars.” He was particularly impressed by Gallagher’s command of spoken Latin and saw it as proof that Latin is still alive. Referring to Gallagher’s approach to teaching conversational Latin as if it were a living language, Perry said that “as a self-labeled ‘modern language enthusiast,’ I found this idea very interesting indeed.”
Senior Henry LaFond attended the seminars because Gallagher’s mastery of Latin impressed him when they met during the term abroad program in Rome last year. “I very much enjoyed both seminars, as well as having Monsignor Gallagher sit in on my Latin class,” LaFond said. “He definitely left me feeling inspired to continue my study of Latin, to continue working on composition and eager to explore some of the new methods of learning that he suggested.” LaFond was intrigued by the idea of incorporating elements of conversational Latin into classes at every level and “would support anything that leads students to enjoy Latin.”
Hou echoed this sentiment, pointing out that “it’s not like it’s violating some sacred tradition of solely written Latin.”