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Hebdomada Papae: The pope’s new podcast, in Latin

Vatican Radio is to start broadcasting a weekly news bulletin and podcast in Latin, the Holy See's official but slowly disappearing language.

Hebdomada Papae: The pope's new podcast, in Latin
Radio Vaticana's radio antenna inside the Vatican. Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP

The five-minute “Hebdomada Papae” (Pope's Week) will be first broadcast on Saturday, with transcripts in different languages to accompany the podcast version to help budding Latin lovers.

“It will be a proper radio news programme, with reportages and briefs,” said Vatican News' editorial director Andrea Tornielli. “We envisage it as a challenge for the future rather than a nostalgic look at the past.”

READ ALSO: New Italian TV show to tell story of Rome's birth… in Latin


Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

Radio Vatican journalists will produce the programme alongside the Vatican Secretariat of Latin Letters, which already draws up official documents in Latin and manages the pope's Latin language Twitter account.

Latin remains the official language at the Vatican, although its use is nowadays limited to legal texts and prayers. Italian is the preferred working language, along with French for diplomatic communications.

Learning Latin is no longer obligatory in most seminaries, but Vatican Radio currently broadcasts one mass a week in Latin. 

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Sweden in Focus podcast: Political misrepresentation abroad, language tests and Swedish stereotypes

This week's behind-the-scenes look at the biggest news stories in Sweden with the journalists who know them best.

Sweden in Focus podcast: Political misrepresentation abroad, language tests and Swedish stereotypes

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The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast is sponsored by Akademikernas A-kassa.

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