Aquinas relic for Malta’s St Dominic feast marking philosopher’s canonisation

Malta’s Dominican Order will be celebrating the feast of St Dominic in the city of Birgu during August with the rare showcasing of one of the many relics claimed to belong to the body of St Thomas Aquinas – one of the Church’s great philosophers.

The St Dominic feast will be celebrated from 19 to 27 August, with Pope Francis issuing a plenary indulgence to anyone attending the celebrations connected to St Thomas of Aquinas during three major anniversaries in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

A plenary indulgence is a powerful remission of punishment that would have resulted from sins that were already forgiven. In Catholic theology, this covers all sins, mortal or venial, that the recipient has committed up to that time, if the person sincerely repents.

The Dominican Order is celebrating the 700th anniversary from Aquinas’s canonisation – 18 July, 1323 by Pope John XXII –as well as 750 years from his death in 2024, and then 800 years from his birth in 2025.

The relic arrives in Malta from Rome on 19 August, with a mass celebrating its arrival at the Church of the Annunciation, led by Provincial Vince Micallef OP. The congregation will then proceed to walk to the Church of the Holy Trinity, to welcome the St Thomas Aquinas relic. The relic will then be moved back to the Church of the Annunciation, where it will be crowned and celebrated with an antiphonal song and given a holy blessing. The relic will be on show at the Church of the Annunciation up until the 27 August.

St Thomas Aquinas died March 7, 1274, and was canonized on July 18, 1323. He was made a doctor of the Church in 1567.

Aquinas was a Dominican friar and priest and is considered one of the Church’s greatest teachers, philosophers, and theologians. 

Some of his greatest accomplishments are his works of theology. These include the Summa Contra Gentiles, the Compendium Theologiae, and Summa Theologica.

Nearing death, he made a final confession and asked for the Eucharist to be brought to him. In its presence, he declared: “I adore you, my God and my Redeemer … for whose honour I have studied, laboured, preached, and taught.”

Relics of holy people as well as the alleged ones pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth were once the key to worship for Christendom’s propaganda masters, as aptly recounted in the Umberto Eco novel Baudolino.

Many still remain cherished and revered at the heart of Christianity. The Dominican Order in Vittoriosa previously welcomed a relic of Saint Dominic himself in Malta to mark the eighth centenary from the death of their founder: the cranium of St Dominic from the Dominican Monastery of Monte Mario in Rome.