Twitter of Pope Francis in Latin is gaining more and more popularity: more than 211 thousand people read the Pope’s wise sayings in the so-called “dead language” of the Ancient Roman Empire. His main followers are students.
Dead language
"This is the beginning of a new life for a dead language," says the British magazine Times. And all thanks to Pope Francis, who tweeted “ad infinitum” “ad infinitum” - lat .. Perhaps for many “est incomprehensibilis” “it’s not clear” - lat. Nevertheless, the Pope’s twitter in Latin has twice as many followers as his Twitter in Arabic, he even overtook similar pages in Polish and German.
“Such success is certainly pleasant, albeit unexpected,” the Vatican’s official website noted a year after the pope’s first Latin post on Twitter.
Of course, @Pontifex_ln cannot compete in popularity either with the Pope’s twitter in Italian, which has 4.68 million subscribers, or with its English version with 3.62 million readers. But Bishop Daniel Gallaghan, an American priest who supports the Latin version of Twitter on behalf of the Holy See, argues that Cicero’s language is not limited by time or place: “He communicates with every person at any given time. Latin conveys the story itself "
Latin is perfect for Pope Francis's messages because of its brevity and conciseness. However, Pontiff's messages in a "very informal" style are quite difficult to translate. Bishop Gallaghan and his team of Latinists say they are very interested in finding new methods for translating modern jargon.
But who are all the same subscribers?
Bishop Gallaghan argues: "We have reason to believe that many subscribers are university students, high school students, or even younger students." One is given a translation of Twitter articles as homework. Others just have fun translating Francis’s sayings, and someone is truly drawn into discussions in Latin quotes from the Pope.
"Some people follow latin twitter because it’s a kind of way to create their own group. Such people like to belong to the chosen community with their own unique cipher. If you are able to translate a tweet, you are allowed to join the club."
Pope Francis is an active supporter of social media. And as the Times notes: “Even if he only subscribed to his own nine pages on Twitter, this is already a significant improvement over the Dalai Lama, which has 8.4 million subscribers, but he himself does not follow anyone and writes only in English language. "
