AUTHENTICATION. – It is the attribution to a document, a writing, or another object of the force to constitute public faith and to serve as full proof. Authentication recognizes and proves the authenticity or genuineness of a document or declaration, so that the document or declaration may be said to come from the authority or person to whom it is attributed, and to correspond in content to what it purports 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 pertains to private writings and is an administrative act of a certifying nature, consisting in a declaration of knowledge by the public official which confers public faith upon the private writing.
In the Code of Canon Law, 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 other formalities required according to the nature of the act.
The authentication of authoritative acts pertains to the authority 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 a 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 or at least whose signature added to the act gives public faith to what is declared in the act, or to the conformity of copies with the original, within the limits of the office or mandate of the notary (can. 372, § 3; 373; 374; 503). Judicial acts are authenticated and acquire value only if drafted or at least signed by the notary (can. 1585, § 1).
In the causes of beatification and canonization of the servants of God, it is also the task of the notary to attest authentically the conformity of transcripts with the original acts, and to compare and declare the correspondence between transcriptions and the documents preserved in libraries, archives, etc. (can. 2016). The postulator is given the transcript of the process made by the ordinary after the exemplar has been authenticated by the chancellor (can. 2075). The authentication of the summary, that is, the authentic attestation of the correspondence between the summary made by the advocate and the postulator and the acts of the cause delivered to the Sacred Congregation of Rites, pertains to the Promoter General of the Faith (can. 2076, § 2).
The faculty of authentication recognized to the ecclesiastical notary has a very broad scope: in addition to what has been said, this faculty allows the notary to authenticate all documents in which he describes what occurred in his presence (can. 374, § 1, n. 2); hence even a private writing is authenticated by him when he declares who is its author and that it was drawn up in his presence. The faculty of the notary to authenticate may be exercised only within the territory of the ecclesiastical superior who appointed him (can. 374, § 2).
A. OF RELICS. – It is the act by which, through the due formalities, they are declared genuine, so as to render possible their public exposition to worship (can. 1283, § 1). Such authentication involves the affixing of a seal on the reliquary and the drafting of a document by the authenticator, with the same seal used for the case being affixed to it (C. Berruti, n. 84). The authentication of relics may be performed by cardinals, by local ordinaries (excluding vicars general), and by others who have obtained the faculty (can. 1283, § 1, and the reply of the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of 17 July 1933). To a certain extent, the postulators of causes of beatification and canonization may authenticate relics (cf. Codex pro Postulatoribus, part VII, tit. I, n. 5).