St. Christopher, patron saint of travelers, fruit dealers, epileptics and surfers, is a figure whose image remains a staple of Catholic gift shops and is still a comforting talisman to many a believer.
For example, Vietnamese immigrant and Catholic convert Tuyet Romero, a 53-year-old secretary and bookkeeper at St. Christopher Catholic Church in West Covina, has kept a St. Christopher medal on her key chain for 20 years.
"I didn't know about St. Christopher in Vietnam. I was a Buddhist. When I came to work here, the pastor at the time had one and I asked him about it, and he gave me one," she said. "I believe it helps keep me safe. Every time I cross the street, I always say, 'St. Christopher, protect me.' And I haven't got hit yet. I always give one to our visiting priests when they come to us from different countries."
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have had an upward effect on sales of St. Christopher paraphernalia, said Clara Romera, who with her husband, Samuel, owns St. Teresa's Catholic Gift Shop in Santa Ana.
"It's always been like that," said Romero, no relation to Tuyet Romero. "Whenever there's been a war, St. Christopher has saved a lot of soldiers."
But, wait a second.
Didn't the Roman Catholic Church strip Christopher of his sainthood a long time ago?
Haven't scholars concluded that he never really existed, except in the fertile minds of medieval monks who spun fatuous tales of his carrying the Christ child across a swiftly flowing river?
Well, not exactly.
To begin with, the church never de-sanctified Christopher, whose annual feast day was July 25. Rather, it busted him, in the military sense, relegating him to a lower rank on the liturgical calendar, in large part because of his wobbly historical status.
The church's "universal calendar" designates certain saints to be honored on certain days by Catholics around the world. In the 1960s, the reformist Vatican Council II undertook to tidy things up and make the overloaded calendar leaner and more relevant to the far-flung peoples in the modern church. Along with many other saints, Christopher was kicked off the universal calendar in 1969, although individual parishes or localities were still free to celebrate his feast day.
In removing him, church officials termed the stories of his life "legendary," but stopped short of asserting that he never existed or was never martyred in the early 4th century.
