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Why did Pope Leo XIII describe Thomas Aquinas as a defender of the Catholic faith?

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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. — 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.

Pope Leo XIII described St. Thomas Aquinas as the "special bulwark and glory of the Catholic Faith" in his 1879 encyclical, Aeterni Patris.1

By the mid-19th century, church authorities sought to defend the Christian faith against modern idealist and subjectivist philosophies, such as those proposed by G.W.F. Hegel, which rejected traditional medieval foundations. Pope Leo XIII believed that the realism found in the works of St. Thomas Aquinas provided a robust intellectual framework to counter these modern trends.1

The Pope advocated for a restoration of Scholastic philosophy, specifically calling for a recovery of Aquinas’s wisdom to address contemporary intellectual and social problems. By promoting Aquinas as a defender of the faith, Leo XIII aimed to establish a sound doctrinal foundation for the Roman Catholic Church, eventually naming him the patron of all Catholic schools in 1880.1