(1939 - 2020) was an internationally recognized authority on, and celebrated teacher of, the Latin language, the future of which he arguably did more than any other contemporary to ensure. As Latinist to the Pope Fr Foster he worked for nearly half a century in the Latin Letters section of the Secretariat of State in the Vatican, and composed the official Latin version for countless ecclesiastical documents. He taught Latin in Rome from 1985 to 2008, and subsequently relocated his Aestiva Romae Latinitas, a free Latin academy, to his native city of Milwaukee.
He was renowned for his magisterial command of Latin, his deep commitment to its survival as a living language, and perhaps most of all for the brilliance and inspirational power of his pedagogy. In 2010 he was admitted honoris causa to the degree of Doctor of Laws of the University of Notre Dame. The Catholic University Press of America published in 2016 Ossa Latinitatis Sola, a work that presents a distillation of his distinctive pedagogical method. The College was honored to have Fr Foster as a Visitor.
