At 0.17 square miles in size with a population of only 825 people, you’d expect the Vatican City to speak only one or two languages. Yet, the languages of the Vatican City are more diverse than any other country in Europe. Not bad for the smallest country in the world.
Indeed, it is the only country where Latin is the official language, and there over 40 languages spoken in the country, some with billions of speakers, and others with only a few hundred thousand…
Official Languages of Vatican City
According to the Vatican City, there are two official languages spoken in the country – one historical/cultural/clerical language and one administrative language.
Latin (Clerical/Historical Language)
Italian (Administrative Language)
Papal Languages
Since the creation of the modern Vatican state in 1929, there have been eight Popes, who have had four native languages in total:
Italian (Popes Pius XI, Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul I)
Polish (Pope John Paul II)
German (Pope Benedict XVI)
Spanish (Pope Francis)
Other Languages of Vatican City
Though not official in any capacity, the Vatican City uses several other languages.
Either they are the native languages of the people who live in the country (as there are no native-born citizens of the Vatican City) or a language that the Vatican’s website and/or newspaper (L’Osservatore Romano) publish in:
Albanian
Amharic
Arabic
Belarussian
Bulgarian
Chinese
Croatian
Czech
Dutch
English
French
Greek
Hebrew
Hindi
Hungarian
Indonesian
Japanese
Korean
Latvian
Lithuanian
Macedonian
Malayalam
Maltese
Polish
Portuguese
Romanian
Russian
Slovak
Slovene
Swahili
Swedish
Tamil
Tigrinya
Ukrainian
Vietnamese
What do you think of the languages of the Vatican City? Do you speak any (besides English of course)? Tell me in the comments!