# Francis’s 2023 letter marks the 700th anniversary of the 1323 canonization in public Vatican text

Date: 2023

## The fact

On 30 June 2023 the Holy See published a letter of Francis to the envoy for the 700th anniversary of [Aquinas](/people/thomas-aquinas)’s canonization at Fossanova. It is commemoration, not a new dogma.

## Context

Anniversary letters can be empty and can also keep a shared intellectual calendar. Small cohesion path, high confidence on the document.

Thomas Aquinas is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official edition, Holy See, or archive page and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Francis, letter on the 700th anniversary of Aquinas’s canonization (30 June 2023) (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2023/documents/20230630-lettera-card-semeraro.html; Holy See / vatican.va).

## Significance

A 2023 Vatican anniversary letter is a public commemorative path, not a 1323 bull.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is [social-cohesion](/drivers/social-cohesion). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Thomas Aquinas: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-aquinas

## Drivers

- Social Cohesion: https://factrail.ai/drivers/social-cohesion

## Sources

- https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/letters/2023/documents/20230630-lettera-card-semeraro.html
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Thomas-Aquinas

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/aq-2023-canonization-letter