AUTHENTICATION. - It is the attribution to a document, a writing or another object of the force of constituting public proof and providing full evidence. Authentication recognizes and proves the authenticity or genuineness of a document or declaration, whereby the document or declaration must 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 in question in the cited article refers to private writings and is an administrative act of the certifying category, 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 by means of the drafting and signing of the act, or at least by 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 said acts may be authenticated by the authority that issued them or by a notary (can. 1813, § 1, n. 1). Apart from 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, constitutes 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 causes of beatification and canonization of the servants of God it is furthermore the task of the notary to attest authentically the conformity of the transcripts with the original acts, and to compare and declare the correspondence between the 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 copy has been authenticated by the chancellor (can. 2073). 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, belongs to the Sub-Promotor General of the Faith (can. 2076, § 2).
The faculty of authenticating recognized in the ecclesiastical notary has a very vast scope: beyond what has been said, this faculty permits the notary to render authentic all documents in which he describes what has occurred in his presence (can. 374, § 1, n. 2); therefore a private writing is also authenticated by him when he declares who is the author who drafted it in his presence. The notary's faculty to authenticate may be exercised only within the territory of the ecclesiastical superior who appointed him (can. 374, § 2).
Authentication of relics. - It is the act by which they are declared genuine through the due formalities, in order to make possible their exposition for public worship (can. 1283, § 1). Such authentication entails the affixing of a seal on the reliquary and the drafting of a document by the authenticating party and the affixing to it of the same seal used for the casket (C. Berruti, n. 84). The authentication of relics may be performed by cardinals, by local ordinaries, with the exception of vicars general, and by others who have obtained the faculty (can. 1283, § 1, and the response of the Pontifical Commission for the Authentic Interpretation of 17 July 1933). To a certain extent, the postulators of a cause of beatification and canonization may authenticate relics (cf. Codex pro Postulatoribus, part VII, tit. I, n. 5).