VSI Vice President and co-Founder Nancy Llewellyn on the passing of her mentor and teacher, legendary Latinist Fr. Reginald Foster OCD.
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine. Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
I’m trying to absorb the news of the death of Reggie Foster yesterday morning. Hearing it, I felt at once how fitting it was, and is, that he should have done so on Christmas Day — passing thus to God under THE great sign of hope and of light in the darkness, second only to Easter. My thoughts are scattered, and yet I know I must sit down and put them together now. It’s something I’d meant to do for some years, and especially after seeing him for the last time in November 2019, on his 80th birthday. If I’ve done anything good for Latin in my own career, it’s because of him, more than any other. SALVI certainly would not exist. VSI would not exist. So many works of others — Paideia being one — would not exist. And still other initiatives out there that do not owe Reggie their beginnings nevertheless could not, I daresay, have grown and prospered but that they were peopled and supported by so many Old Fosterians. More to write. More to say. And yet, for this first moment, enough.
Links: Vatican News https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2020-12/father-reginald-foster-vatican-radio-latinist.html
Fr. Foster’s personal website: https://thelatinlanguage.org/