(and Greek)

Trying to give some encouragement:

So, in a bid to stem the decline, on Oct. 30 the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences launched a competition for journalists. An award will be given to the journalist who best shows an appreciation for Latin and Greek, demonstrates their relevance to

Europe

’s “cultural and scientific” development, and who brings the languages out of the realm of scholarship and into public understanding.

The winner will be announced in May 2007 and receive a prize of 5,000 euros.

The pontifical committee hopes the competition — the second in two years — will help address a serious problem in European schools and universities. According to committee members, the language’s disappearance is damaging not only to historical studies but also to linguistic, philosophical and theological studies that are the foundation of European culture and represent a cultural inheritance for humanity.

Father Cosimo Semeraro, secretary of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences, said journalists have been targeted because of the key role they play as opinion-formers.

“Journalists have the possibility of making clear to politicians and those in government what happens when Latin and Greek are not taught in school and university,” he told the Register Nov. 3.

The competition has a European focus, Father Semeraro said, because the roots of Western culture are found in

Europe

. But he added that the committee also wants the rest of the world to “think very seriously” about the importance of Latin and Greek.