In my youth, my neighbors who were sent to Catholic school had to learn Latin.
Latin is a fairly complex language, considerably more difficult than the Romance languages.
Learning Latin helps in Learning not only the Romance languages but also other indo European languages from Sanskrit to Polish to Dutch
considerably more difficult than the Romance languages.
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actually, no, in my experience - you can see the English derivations in many Latin words.
All Latin Rite (i.e., western rite Catholic, not Greek Catholic) priests are _supposed_ to learn Latin in the seminary.
Latin _is_ a Romance language, the mother of all of the other Romance languages. It has a lot of rules that need to be memorized, but not a lot of exceptions to the rules (unlike English).
I studied both Latin and German. They're fairly similar in difficulty, and also similar in how they work.
Yet it translates into English better than any of the ancient languages. The translations of Augustine and Calvin are very readable.