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Such is the horrific premise of “The Latinist,” a superb literary suspense novel that calls to mind an earlier such debut, Donna Tartt’s ‘The Secret History.”

Another Latinist had dated the Italian poet and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini in his youth before becoming a priest and had a habit of screaming profanities.

And I know we make fun of Bunny for being such a dreadful Latinist, but he’d managed to eke out a pretty competent little English translation of the more recent entries.

“He’s on record as saying that he’s not sure the discipline deserves a future,” Denis Feeney, a Latinist at Princeton, told me.

Known by the Swiss Guards as “the gas-station attendant” because of his blue work shirt and pants, Foster was occasionally controversial, always charming and not whom you’d expect to serve as the Vatican’s head Latinist.