Contemporary Latin - Ecclesiastical Latin

Ecclesiastical Latin

The Catholic Church has continued to use Latin, as in preceding centuries. Two main areas can be distinguished. One is its use for the official version of all documents issued by the Vatican City, which has remained intact to the present. Although documents are first drafted in various vernaculars (mostly Italian, now also German), the official version is written in Latin by the specific Latin letters office. The other is its use for the liturgy, which has been diminished after the Second Vatican Council of 1962-65, but seems to have recently seen some resurgence sponsored in part by Pope Benedict XVI.

In the Anglican Church, after the publication of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer of 1559, a 1560 Latin edition was published for use at universities such as Oxford and the leading public schools, where the liturgy was still permitted to be conducted in Latin, and there have been several Latin translations since. Most recently a Latin edition of the 1979 USA Anglican Book of Common Prayer has appeared.