Is Italian the official working language of the Vatican?

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That’s an interesting question. I’m sure Italian is used most often as most of the employees are Italian. Whether or not there is some official Vatican City code that makes it the “official” language, I do not know. I would guess the official language (if there is any) would be Latin. But that is purely a guess. I really have no idea.
 
Everything I’ve read points to Italian being the daily working language of the Vatican. When an official document is to be released, there is an “official Latinist” (or likely several) on staff to translate the document from Italian (or possibly other languages) into Latin.
 
Tarpeian_Rock said:
Everything I’ve read points to Italian being the daily working language of the Vatican. When an official document is to be released, there is an “official Latinist” (or likely several) on staff to translate the document from Italian (or possibly other languages) into Latin.
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That is correct. Latin was the administrative language of the Roman Empire and also of the Catholic Church once Christianity subsumed the Roman Empire. All Church documents, of which a countless number of them are still untranslated, are preserved in Latin.

BTW, Msgr. Gallagher does the Latin translations on Pope’s twitter account. He has some interesting thoughts on translations into Latin.

ncronline.org/news/vatican-latin-expert-finds-new-uses-ancient-language
 
I remember reading somewhere that the documents are translated from Latin to French to English. I don’t remember why:shrug:.
 
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