On "Deus omnipotens"

The Catholic Encyclopedia, The Vatican, and a 3 day rabbit hole

On the feast of St. James, a friend brought up the fact that many of the sites that talked about the this great and the location his remains had a version of this quote:

Pope Leo XIII, with the Papal Bull Deus omnipotens of 1 November 1884, solemnly declared the authenticity of the relics preserved in Santiago de Compostela.

Or:

On November 1, 1884, Pope Leo XIII reconfirmed the authenticity of the relics of Saint James at Compostella in the Bull Omnipotens Deus.

Eventually we discovered that all of these quotes were based off of this section from Catholic Encyclopedia:

A strong argument in favour of the authenticity of the sacred relics of Compostela is the Bull of Leo XIII, "Omnipotens Deus," of 1 November, 1884.

But where was the text of this Bull?

A simple Google search didn’t turn up any immediate results. I started digging deeper, searching through archive.org. Nothing. I contacted a priest, Fr. Greg Markey, who had written a book about the Camino, and who had some of the text in his book. He told me that he had only seen a copy of the Spanish version. That gave me another avenue to go down, and I did eventually find a Spanish text (and Italian), but not the Latin I was looking for.

I decided to cut to the chase, and email the Vatican. I started with the Vatican Library: “I'm sorry to inform that we do not have available the mentioned text.” Next, I tried the Vatican Apostolic Archives: “…I am pleased to inform you that the text of your interest is edited in the work Leonis XIII pontificis maximi acta, vol. IV, on pp. 159-172, which you can peruse in the libraries of your country.” Partial success! I was able to find this text on archive.org.

But, even better, the L’Osservatore Romano gave me the scans of the daily edition of their newspaper from the 4th of November, 1884, containing the official text of the Bull:

L'Osservatore Romano - November 4th, 1884

And here is the Latin text:

If anyone is interested in assisting in the translation of this text into English, please let me know!

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