New Latin resources for Catholics

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 14, 2026

Last year, I wrote a long article describing a method of learning Latin with Hans Ørberg’s amazing textbook Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata: Familia Romana. Familia Romana is based on the “natural method,” similar to how we all learned our native tongue—without mentally translating into another language, and without making grammatical analysis the starting point. The book tells a story entirely in Latin, with pictures and marginal notes (in Latin) allowing the student to learn new words and concepts contextually.

Closely linked to the natural method is the idea of comprehensible input. A language only becomes second nature after one has read and listened to a great deal of it. But if the input is too advanced for the student, not only will he be forced to do more analysis, mental translation, and looking up of new words than are conducive to developing an intuitive understanding of a language, his studies will be far less enjoyable. It is more helpful for the student to read a good deal of material at or just slightly above his current skill level.

One challenge for amassing comprehensible input in classical languages is the paucity of written materials at the beginner and early intermediate reading levels. In recent decades, educators have busied themselves producing Latin reading material for beginners. In my previous article, for instance, I mentioned a number of books made to supplement Familia Romana, providing additional readings and exercises tailored to the skill level of each chapter of FR.

Though I heartily recommend Familia Romana to Catholics as far and away the best existing Latin textbook—by the end of it, I was ready to read the Bible in Latin—it is admittedly short on specifically Catholic material, aside from a late chapter in which a character quotes from the Gospel. To remedy this, French classicist Guillaume Bavière has written a new book, Colloquia sanctorum: Latin Dialogues for Beginners.

Colloquia sanctorum (conversations of the saints) corresponds to the first twenty-four chapters of Familia Romana. Like FR, it uses the natural method, entirely in Latin. Since it uses the same vocabulary and grammar as FR, there are no marginal notes.

The chapters are mostly well-known stories of ancient and medieval saints. They include St. Peter meeting Christ on the road to Rome, St. Augustine and the pears, multiple stories about St. Francis of Assisi, St. Tarcisius, Sts. Benedict and Scholastica, St. Thomas Aquinas’s dinner with St. Louis of France, etc. They are charmingly written in a classical syntax accessible to beginners.

A language student needs not just input, but also output, in the form of exercises applying the language beyond the immediate context of his reading. Familia Romana includes a brief series of exercises at the end of each chapter, and Ørberg wrote a separate workbook, Exercitia Latina I, with more exercises. But to my mind, Ørberg’s own exercises are surpassed in quality by Roberto Carfagni’s 2015 book Nova exercitia Latina I, which offers extensive new exercises for each chapter of FR.

When I say I like Carfagni’s exercises better, I don’t mean that they render Ørberg’s redundant. Ørberg’s exercises test, among other things, one’s memory of vocabulary learned in a chapter, as well as the free composition of complete sentences in response to questions about the story. These are both necessary skills to practice, though I find it tedious when an exercise depends on my memory of the story as much as my knowledge of the language itself.

Instead of focusing on vocabulary, Carfagni’s exercises in Nova exercitia Latina I ingeniously target very precise aspects of grammar, syntax, and idiom, some of which one may not have noticed on one’s first reading of Familia Romana, and some of which were not covered in Ørberg’s Exercitia Latina I. Some of the exercises may be more advanced, but they are also more helpful for understanding and mastering the inner workings of the language.

For instance: Changing a declarative sentence into a question. Changing a compound sentence (Marcus pulsat, Julia cantat) into a complex sentence with a relative clause (Marcus pulsat Juliam, quae cantat). Reassembling a jumble of out-of-order words into a coherent sentence by observing number and case endings. Changing an indirect description of a master giving a command into a quote of the master speaking in the imperative mood, and from there to a description of the servants carrying out the order. Understanding the difference between the reflexive possessive suus and the genitive eius. Proper use of the accusative, ablative, and locative cases according to whether someone is coming to, going from, or residing in a place. Changing an active sentence into a passive one or vice versa. Changing a sentence using habet with the accusative into one using est with the dative possessive. Using the ablative of instrument. Changing a relative clause to a participle (qui dormit to dormiens). Practicing the many different uses of the subjective, and the relationship between the subjunctive in one tense and the indicative in another tense.

A few samples:

Since none of Carfagni’s exercises require remembering details of the Familia Romana story, one could conceivably use Nova exercitia Latina I independently of FR, simply to practice one’s Latin skills.

How might this book be used in conjunction with or instead of Ørberg’s Exercitia Latina I? In my case, I used ELI on my first pass through FR, then discovered Carfagni’s book later and used it on a subsequent reading of FR, and found that this worked well for more high-res study. I would hesitate to recommend replacing ELI with NELI altogether, since ELI reviews vocabulary much more. Using two full exercise books alongside one’s first go at FR may be excessive, but teachers of beginner students might assign a selection of exercises from both books as they see fit, to target particularly important skills. To students making a repeat visit to Familia Romana, I give Carfagni’s Nova exercitia Latina I my highest recommendation.