AUTHENTICATION. — This is the attribution to a document, a written text, or some other object of the force of bearing public faith and constituting full proof. Authentication recognizes and proves the authenticity or genuineness of a document or declaration, whereby the document or declaration must be held to proceed from the authority or person to whom it is attributed, and to correspond in content to what it is claimed to reproduce.
According to the Italian Civil Code, art. 2073, authentication “consists in the attestation by the public official that the signature was affixed in his presence.” The authentication referred to in the cited article concerns private writings and is an administrative act in the category of certifying acts, consisting in a declaration of knowledge by the public official which confers public faith upon the private writing.
In the CIC, the public faith of a document or other attestation is the result of the declaration made by the competent authority through the drafting and signing of the act, or at least through the affixing of the signature and the use of the other formalities required according to the nature of the act.
The authentication of authoritative acts belongs to the authority itself from which the acts emanate; copies of extracts and declarations referring to such acts may be authenticated by the authority that issued them or by the notary (can. 1813, § 1, n. 1). Except in these cases, the authentication of acts or documents is the proper task of the ecclesiastical notary, whose writing and signature, or at least the signature added to the act, bears public faith as to what is declared in the act, or as to the conformity of copies with the original, within the limits of the notary’s office or mandate (cann. 372, § 3; 373; 374; 503). Judicial acts are authenticated and acquire validity only if drafted, or at least signed, by the notary (can. 1585, § 1).
In cases of the beatification and canonization of the servants of God, it is furthermore the notary’s task to attest authentically to the conformity of the transumpts with the original acts, and to compare and declare the correspondence between the transcripts and the documents preserved in libraries, archives, etc. (can. 2016). The transumpt of the process made by the ordinary is delivered to the postulator after the copy has been authenticated by the chancellor (can. 2073). The authentication of the summarium, that is, the authentic attestation of the correspondence between the summarium prepared by the advocate and the postulator and the acts of the case delivered to the S. Congregation of Rites, belongs to the Sub-Promoter General of the faith (can. 2076, § 2).
The power of authentication granted to the ecclesiastical notary has a very broad scope: in addition to what has been said, this power enables the notary to authenticate all documents in which he describes what has occurred in his presence (can. 374, § 1, n. 2); thus, a private writing is also authenticated by him when he declares who is its author and that the latter drew it up in his presence. The notary’s power of authentication may be exercised only within the territory of the ecclesiastical superior who appointed him (can. 374, § 2).
Authentication of relics. — This is the act by which they are declared genuine, through the due formalities, in order to make their exposition for public veneration possible (can. 1283, § 1). Such authentication entails the affixing of a seal to the reliquary and the drafting of a document by the authenticator, with the same seal used for the reliquary affixed to it (C. Berruti, n. 84). Relics may be authenticated by cardinals, local ordinaries, excluding vicars general, and others who have obtained the faculty to do so (can. 1283, § 1, and response of the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of 17 July 1933). To a certain extent, relics may be authenticated by postulators in cases of beatification and canonization (cf. Codex pro Postulatoribus, part VII, tit. I, n. 5).
BIBLI: C. Berruti, Institutiones iuris canonici, IV, Torino-Roma 1940; M. Lega-V. Baroccetti, Commentarius in indicia ecclesiastica, II, there 1941. Elio Ganhari