Tom Powell
FEW people have their words repeated and analysed as much as the Pope. But what happens when he doesn’t speak the most widely-spoken language in the world?
Enter Gibraltarian Mark Miles. The humble priest is now the Pope’s foremost translator, putting his holy message into English for global audiences to receive.
His upbringing on the Rock equipped him perfectly as a bilingual English-Spanish speaker.
The 48-year-old attended the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome, the training ground of Vatican diplomats, which means his Italian isn’t bad either.
But issues do occasionally arise due to linguistic discrepancies between Pope Francis’s Argentinian dialect and Miles’ Spanish.
Nonetheless, the Pope has publicly praised Miles for managing to keep up with him, despite a penchant for ad-libbing.
He has even developed a reputation for expertly imitating the Pope’s style, with pauses and laughter in the right places.
