The Vatican committee for historical sciences (comitato vaticano per le scienze storiche) has launched an alarm over the decline of the study of the classical languages, Latin and Greek, in Europoean schools and universities. The committee stresses that this decline is damaging not only historical studies, but also philological, philosophical and theological studies, which are at the foundation of European culture, and that furthermore the languages represent a cultural inheritance for the whole of mankind.

To draw attention to the situation, the committee has announced the institution of a prize for journalistic articles published from today up to April 2007 which illustrate the importance of the classical languages for scientific and cultural development.