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What did Pope Leo XIII ask Catholics to do in the encyclical Aeterni Patris?
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Thomism
St. Thomas Aquinas Enthroned Between the Doctors of the Old and New Testaments, with Personifications of the Virtues, Sciences, and Liberal Arts, fresco by Andrea da Firenze, c. 1365; in the Spanish Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
In the 1879 encyclical Aeterni Patris, Pope Leo XIII established Thomism—the theological and philosophical system based on the work of St. Thomas Aquinas—as the official and normative system for the Roman Catholic Church.12
To implement this, the Pope directed Catholics to adopt Thomism as the standard for:
- Priestly Training: It was to be the foundational framework for the education of priests within church seminaries.2
- Academic Education: It was to serve as the normative philosophical and theological guide for the education of the laity at universities.2
To support this revival, Pope Leo XIII also sponsored the creation of a definitive critical edition of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas.2