Errata — corrections to published Sanctum content.
What we got wrong, what is true, and where the fix stands.
Why this page exists
Our Editorial & Production Standards page makes a promise: “Errors discovered after publication are corrected publicly — see the Sed Contra errata page at /sed-contra/errata/ when one is logged.” This is that page, and every entry below names the asset, the error, and the source that settles it.
If you find an error in any Sanctum page, video, or reel — a misattributed quotation, a misnumbered Catechism paragraph, a wrong date, a saint’s canonical status stated wrongly — write to [email protected], and we will correct it, name the correction, and date it here.
| Date | Asset | What we said | Correction | Source | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-09 | Short / reel, “The Three Who Drank Alone” (YouTube, Instagram, and syndicated copies) | The reel presents Matt Talbot as one of “three saints.” | Matt Talbot is Venerable, not a canonized saint. Pope Paul VI declared him Venerable on 3 October 1975; he has not been beatified or canonized. He should have been named “Venerable Matt Talbot.” | Matt Talbot — “Though not formally recognised as a saint, he has been declared Venerable.” | Logged here 11 September 2026. The correction to the video’s own description is written and awaiting a platform sign-in step; the copies on other platforms are pending. |
| 2026-09-09 | Short / reel, “The Three Who Drank Alone” | “…and then forty years of charitable labor for the sick and the dying,” of St. John of God. | About thirteen years, not forty. His conversion came on 20 January 1537 and he died on 8 March 1550 — the hospital ministry ran c. 1537–1550. The error overstates it by roughly twenty-seven years. | John of God — conversion “on Saint Sebastian’s Day (January 20) of 1537”; “died on March 8, 1550.” | Logged here 11 September 2026. The correction to the video’s own description is written and awaiting a platform sign-in step; the copies on other platforms are pending. |
| 2026-09-09 | Short / reel, “The Three Who Drank Alone” | St. Urban of Langres “hid in vineyards during Roman persecution” and was made “patron of those the vine destroys.” | Two errors. Urban of Langres (327 – c. 390) became bishop of Langres in 374 — sixty years after the Edict of Milan — and the accounts describe local political turmoil, not a Roman persecution of Christians. And his patronage is of vine-dressers and vintners, the men who work the vine: we invented a patronage of those destroyed by drink and attributed it to the Church. | Urban of Langres — “sixth bishop of Langres from 374”; “political turmoil erupted”; “Urban is thus the patron saint of vine-dressers.” | Logged here 11 September 2026. The correction to the video’s own description is written and awaiting a platform sign-in step; the copies on other platforms are pending. |
A note on this reel
All three errors above are in the same asset, published 9 September 2026. The video’s description and the captions on the other platforms can be edited, and those corrections are in progress; the on-screen title card that reads “THREE SAINTS” is burned into the video frames and cannot be edited in place, and the video’s title repeats it. The choice was to leave the reel up carrying a correction rather than delete it, because deleting it would hide the correction this page exists to publish. If the frame is re-rendered, this entry will be updated to say so.
The underlying failure was ours: the reel passed our pre-publication gate, and that gate was checking the shape of the claims rather than fetching sources to confirm them. Retrieval-backed fact checking was wired into the generation gate on 11 September 2026 as a direct result.
Checked and stands
Not every objection is an error. When a viewer challenges a claim and the sources uphold what we published, we record that here too — publishing a “correction” that is itself false would be the worse failure.
| Date checked | Asset | Question raised | Why the claim stands | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-11 | Short, “They Burned Joan of Arc Alive — at 19” (published 4 June 2026) | A viewer objected that Joan of Arc was not burned alive — that smoke or asphyxiation would have killed her before the fire did. | The claim stands. The sources describe her conscious in the fire: a cross was held before her while she “called continuously upon the name of Jesus.” She was executed by burning at Rouen on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen. No source we can reach states a cause of death other than the burning, and a person who dies of smoke in a fire lit beneath her was still burned alive. No correction is owed. | Catholic Encyclopedia, “St. Joan of Arc” |