After some months of waiting, the Vatican today issued the Holy Father’s social (environmental?) encyclical, Laudato si’, in Latin. Some commentators, including Father John Hunwicke, whose Latin chops far outstrip our own, have remarked upon the absence of an official Latin text for what will likely be the greatest accomplishment of Francis’s pontificate.

The Vatican has taken something of an inconsistent line with respect to Latin versions of the Holy Father’s writings. It took some time for the Latin text of Misericordiae vultus to be released, for example. And the Holy Father’s motu proprio Fidelis dispensator et prudens, which began the financial reforms of the Holy See, has never been issued in Latin, notwithstanding its Latin incipit. On the other hand, the Holy Father’s bombshell motu proprio reforming the Church’s legal process for matrimonial cases, Mitis iudex Dominus Iesus, was issued first in Latin, and other translations have only gradually trickled out. And, as usual, certain juridical documents addressing the erection of dioceses and the like are published only in Latin. It is, therefore, hard to divine precisely what the Vatican’s policy on Latin editions of papal documents is.

But enough of the inside baseball. For now, let us all enjoy the limpid Latin employed by the Supreme Pontiff in his signature encyclical, a brief example of which follows:

Paradigma technocraticum tendit ad suum imperium etiam super oeconomiam et rem politicam exercendum. Oeconomia omnem technologicam progressionem recipit ut lucrum consequatur, nulla habita attentione ad negativa consectaria pro homine quae evenire possunt. Res nummaria realem oeconomiam demergit. Nihil a discrimine pecuniario mundiali homines didicerunt ac perquam lente ab ambitali detrimento. In quibusdam coetibus asseritur hodiernam oeconomiam atque technologiam soluturas esse omnes ambitus quaestiones, eodem modo cum asseritur, per sermonem haud academicum, famis inopiaeque in mundo quaestiones esse solvendas utique per mercati augmentum. Non agitur de quadam re theoriarum oeconomicarum, quas fortasse hodie nemo defendere audet, sed de earum collocatione in activa oeconomiae progressione. Qui illud verbis non affirmant, sustinent hoc factis, cum haud solliciti videntur de aequa productionis extensione, divitiarum meliore distributione, responsali ambitus cura vel futurarum generationum iuribus tuendis. Suis quidem moribus confirmant sibi maxima lucra consequenda sufficere. Solus tamen mercatus integram humanam progressionem socialemque inclusionem non praestat. […] Interea homines “fruuntur quadam specie sumptuosi et immoderati superprogressus qui improbanda ratione adversatur permanenti infrahumanae egestatis condicioni”, […] dum non satis celeriter apparantur institutiones oeconomicae et normae sociales quae pauperioribus regulari modo ad fundamentales opes accedere sinant. Denique non satis intellegitur ad quos pertineant altiores hodiernarum inaequalitatum radices, quae cum directione coniunguntur, finibus, sensu socialique contextu technologici et oeconomici incrementi.

(Citations omitted.)