1: I guess yes..

2: Off topic here in FSE but that might be: An endless state of poverty is a beautiful hymn to the wealth¹.

3: French requires more words than Latin, in particular to render the declensions.

In any case, this sentence is a joke. The original Latin one reads:

Pulcher hymnus Dei homo immortalis

The immortal man is a beautiful hymn to God.

About the role of que in this sentence, it a pronom relatif prédicat averbal as in:

C’est une belle fleur que la rose

which is equivalent to:

C’est une belle fleur, la rose.

The verb être is implicit here so the translation might be completed that way:

C’est une belle fleur que la rose est.

and with Anatole France’s translation:

C’est un bel hymne aux richesses que l’éternelle condition du pauvre est.

but we almost never explicitly use a verb here.

¹_{Thanks to Luke for the corrections !}