There's a papal document from about 2 years ago saying exactly the opposite, effectively that Thomism has been useful within Christendom to explain Catholic doctrines for hundreds of years, but now that Christendom is dead, new ways of explaining the same timeless, aphilosophical theologies must be invented, and Thomism essentially left in the past. I was particularly happy when it came out, especially with how it came from Rome, because I came to the same conclusion about 6 months prior.

Fascinating. I certainly haven't kept up.

Scholastic philosophy, to which Thomas Aquinas (13th Century) made an outsize contribution, dates to the beginning of the 2nd Millennium. But Christian theologians and philosophers had been writing for centuries before that.

Scholasticism is also exclusively Western, but philosophy was and is as important in the Christian East as the West.

In the big picture, Augustine of Hippo (4th/5th Century) is probably as important as Aquinas with respect to overall development of Western Catholic thought.

In Eastern Catholic/Orthodox thought there are luminaries such as Gregory of Nazianzus (4th Century) and John of Damascus (7th/8th Century).

What you may be thinking of is Pope Leo XIII’s ultra high praise of Aquinas in Aeterni Patris, published in 1879.

https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docum...