LATIN has been the official language of the Catholic Church. Papal documents are promulgated in Latin. Church documents, most especially laws, are binding in Latin. The Vatican’s official gazette is also in Latin. Although spoken language in the Vatican might be Italian, official texts, particularly those of high importance, are still in Latin. The Catholic Church in the Philippines has recently had several ordinations of new bishops and the Apostolic Mandate, or Litterae Apostolicae, effecting these new appointments are written and read during ordination rites in Latin. The Catholic Church is therefore the last global institution in which Latin remains a living official and normative language. It has maintained Latin for a convergence of theological, historical, political and sociolinguistic reasons — not merely out of conservatism, but because Latin uniquely serves its self-understanding as a universal, trans-historical institution.
After the Second Vatican Council which was held from 1962 to 1965, the use of Latin, most especially in spoken language, has decreased, but it remained as the authoritative constitutional language. Latin remains to be the language of Latin rites but, for pastoral reasons, vernacular languages were permitted for intelligibility and participation. And in practice, vernacular use expanded so widely that Latin receded from everyday parish life.
But Pope Benedict XVI viewed Latin as a core element of the Church’s theological continuity and liturgical identity. And so in 2007, he issued Summorum Pontificum, which declared the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass (1962 Missal) the “Extraordinary Form” of the Roman Rite, affirmed that it was never abolished, and gave priests broad permission to celebrate it without special episcopal approval. And then came Pope Francis, who de-emphasized its symbolic centrality. He restricted the Old Latin Mass and, in 2021, issued Traditionis Custodes, which reversed Summorum Pontificum, reasserted that the post-Vatican II vernacular liturgy is the only ordinary form, and placed the Latin Mass under episcopal and Vatican control.
More recently, Pope Leo XIV approved the return of the Latin Mass in the Vatican with Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrating a pontifical Latin Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 25, 2025, with Pope Leo XIV’s explicit approval. But the Vatican no longer prescribes Latin as its primary official language. In a new set of rules for the administrative apparatus of the Catholic Church, which was published six months after the new Pope Leo XIV took office, Regolamento Generale indicates, “The authorities of the Curia shall, as a rule, write their acts in Latin or in another language.” This can be clearly seen as a move toward a more multilingual Church in the future.
These ongoing changes regarding the use of Latin in the Catholic Church only shows that, even institutions like the Catholic Church would also have to deal with language issues and make choices regarding what languages to keep and let go of in the changing times.
Ariane Macalinga Borlongan is a public intellectual, language scholar and migrant advocate. He is one of the leading researchers on English in the Philippines and one of the pioneers of migration linguistics. He is the youngest to earn a doctorate in linguistics, at age 23, from De La Salle University, and has had several teaching and research positions in Germany, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Poland and Singapore. He is currently associate professor of sociolinguistics at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.