Cardinal Arinze was in town lately....

See the article: Cardinal Arinze encourages more Latin liturgies

"The Roman rite has Latin as its official language," he said. The great religions of the world all "hold on" to their founding languages: Judaism to Hebrew and Aramaic, Islam to Arabic, Hindu to Sanskrit and Buddhism to Pali, he reportedly said.

Latin "suits a Church that is universal. It has a stability modern languages don't have," he said. The Cardinal also said it’s no small matter for priests or bishops from around the world to be able to speak to each other in a universal language and lauded the possibility that "a million students" gathered for World Youth Day every few years could "say parts of the Mass in Latin."

But of course Catholic scholars need to know classical Greek, too.