Pope Leo XIV Names Dr. Andreina Rita as Vatican Library’s New Latin Scriptor

Pope Leo XIV has appointed Dr. Andreina Rita as the Vatican Apostolic Library’s new Latin Scriptor, a specialist role dedicated to ancient Latin texts and Church heritage.

Newsroom (01/05/2026 Gaudium Press) Pope Leo XIV has appointed Dr. Andreina Rita as the new Scriptor Latinus — Latin Writer — of the Vatican Apostolic Library, the Holy See’s Press Office has confirmed. The appointment elevates a familiar figure within the institution: Rita has been part of the Library’s staff since 1994 and most recently served as Director of its Printed Books Department.

A Centuries-Old Role at the Heart of the Church

The title of Scriptor Latinus carries a weight that extends far beyond administrative function. Latin remains the official language of the Catholic Church, and its canonical texts — from the Vulgate Bible to papal encyclicals — are written in it. The Scriptor Latinus is a highly trained specialist charged with investigating ancient Latin manuscripts, identifying their authors, establishing dates and contexts, and editing or transcribing texts with scholarly precision.

The role demands years of specialized formation in disciplines such as philology and paleography — the study of historical written documents and ancient scripts. Within the Library, several such scriptors exist, each devoted to a particular language or area of expertise. The Scriptor Graecus, for instance, oversees all matters related to Greek, with particular attention to antiquity’s foundational texts. Latin, however, holds singular importance: it is the linguistic thread that runs through centuries of Church thought, binding faith, reason, and institutional memory into a continuous tradition.

A Lifetime Devoted to Books and Libraries

Andreina Rita was born on August 6, 1965, in Caprarola, a small hilltop town in the Lazio region of Italy, known for the Renaissance grandeur of the Palazzo Farnese. Now 60 years old, she has spent the majority of her professional life in the service of one of the world’s great repositories of human knowledge.

Her academic formation began at the University of Rome La Sapienza, where she earned a degree in Modern Literature. She subsequently pursued advanced studies at the Vatican School of Library Science and the Special School of Archivists and Librarians, also at La Sapienza — a dual preparation that bridged the scholarly and the institutional dimensions of her future career.

In 1994, Rita joined the Vatican Apostolic Library, entering an institution of extraordinary complexity and historical depth. Over three decades, she rose steadily through its ranks: in 2017 she was appointed Head of Office, and in 2020 she assumed the directorship of the Printed Books Department, overseeing a collection that includes some 1,600,000 volumes. Throughout her career, she has contributed to the scholarly literature on the history of books and libraries as both author and editor of monographs and academic articles.

A Library Unlike Any Other

The Vatican Apostolic Library, founded in its current form in the 15th century, stands as one of the most significant centers for the study of Western civilization anywhere on earth. Its holdings are staggering in scope and historical reach: approximately 180,000 manuscripts and archival volumes, around 9,000 incunabula — books printed before the year 1501, in the first decades of the moveable type press — over 300,000 coins and medals, more than 150,000 engravings, thousands of drawings and printing matrices, and upwards of 200,000 photographs.

The Library has not remained static in the face of modernity. In 1985, electronic cataloging of printed materials definitively replaced paper-based systems, and in subsequent years the data held in handwritten and typed entries was transferred to a digital catalog — an undertaking of considerable scale given the sheer breadth of the collections involved.

A Scholarly Appointment with Symbolic Resonance

Rita’s appointment by Pope Leo XIV arrives at a moment when the Church’s relationship with its own Latin heritage continues to be a matter of both liturgical and intellectual significance. The Scriptor Latinus is not merely a custodian of the past; the role actively mediates between the ancient world and contemporary scholarship, ensuring that the textual foundations of Catholic theology and history remain accessible, properly understood, and rigorously maintained.

For an institution whose manuscript holdings span millennia and whose printed collections preserve the intellectual output of the Western world, the appointment of a scholar of Rita’s formation and institutional experience signals a commitment to that continuity — one ancient language at a time.

• Raju Hasmukh with files from ACI Prensa

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