Here's an interesting article about St Christopher over at the LA Times: In Spite of It All, St. Christopher Hangs In There.
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.
"I think a lot of people drew the incorrect conclusion that because someone was removed from the universal calendar, that they were declared nonpersons," said Msgr. William B. Smith, academic dean of St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y., who has written about Christopher's status change.
In recent years, an Irish historian, after careful scrutiny of Roman Empire records and early church writings, has argued that the existence of St. Christopher "has a genuine historical core." David Woods, a professor of ancient classics at University College Cork, suggests that Christopher was really St. Menas, an early Egyptian martyr. [continue]
(You'll need a password to read the rest of the article.)
And by the way, David Woods has a website about St Christopher.
Related:
David Woods, Ancient Classics, University College, Cork
St Christopher - Wikipedia
St Christopher - Catholic-forum.com