I recently read that in the late 1960’s, the Catholic church reformed it’s liturgical calendar. Based on some things that I’ve read, this means they sort of “cleaned house” in regards to things like the Feast Days of the Saints. In other words, they dropped a good number of them from the official roster because they admitted that they may not have existed - that certain saints were mythological or ahistorical.

My original source for this information if Robert Laremy’s Spiritual Cleansings and Psychic Defenses, page 61:

In 1968 Pope Paul VI removed these and many other saints of dubious origins from the official calendar of saints of the Roman Catholic Church, but he added that those who continued to venerate these saints would not be found guilty of any wrongdoing.

I’m having trouble tracking down any more official information than this. I’d particularly like to see a list of what saints were dropped and why. I know from recent unrelated research that St. Christopher is one of these. Catholic Online (which has a great saint and angel database) has some general information in it’s Christopher page regarding all this:

Before the formal canonization process began in the fifteenth century, many saints were proclaimed by popular approval. This was a much faster process but unfortunately many of the saints so named were based on legends, pagan mythology, or even other religions — for example, the story of the Buddha traveled west to Europe and he was “converted” into a Catholic saint! In 1969, the Church took a long look at all the saints on its calendar to see if there was historical evidence that that saint existed and lived a life of holiness. In taking that long look, the Church discovered that there was little proof that many “saints”, including some very popular ones, ever lived. Christopher was one of the names that was determined to have a basis mostly in legend. Therefore Christopher (and others) were dropped from the universal calendar.

Some saints were considered so legendary that their cult was completely repressed (including St. Ursula). Christopher’s cult was not suppressed but it is confined to local calendars (those for a diocese, country, or so forth)

I know the Catholic Church still wrestles with this “problem” in certain parts of the world, in such places as Mexico, with it’s syncretic figure St. Death or La Santisima Muerte. For more info on folk uses of saints, Lucky Mojo has a list dealing with patron saints, and they also have a pretty authoritative page on Saint Death.

Anyway, just to reiterate my questions in case anybody knows the answers: was there a specific name for this reform among the saints that happened in either 1968, or 1969? Has anybody got a list of what saints were downgraded? Actually, now that I think of it, maybe I should just ask my mom. She did write a Catholic book about saints after all… (which I’ve incidentally never read)

On another note, does anybody have any favorite saints, whether they are mythological or historical? I want to get more knowledgeable about them both in general and in specific. So if you have particular ones you like, give me a little background on what draws you to them, and in what context you enjoy them. Do you pray to them, do magical rituals, etc.