Patron Saint of Travelers
St. Christopher, feast day 25 July
St. Christopher is the patron saint of travelers, and his medal is among the most widely worn in the world. His feast is 25 July. St. Raphael the Archangel is also invoked for journeys. AngelGuard publishes the story behind the patronage and the truth about his 1969 calendar change.
Quick facts
Why St. Christopher?
The name is the story. Christopher means Christ-bearer, and the legend has him as a giant of a man who carried travellers across a dangerous river. One night he carried a child who grew impossibly heavy as they crossed, and who told him at the far bank that he had been carrying the weight of the world and its maker. That is why the medal shows a man mid-river with a child on his shoulder, and why it ended up in a hundred million cars. There is a persistent rumour that the Church "removed" him or "decided he never existed", and it is worth correcting because it stops people wearing the medal. In the 1969 revision of the calendar his feast was removed from the universal calendar, along with a number of others whose historical record was too thin to establish with confidence. That is a statement about documentation, not about existence, and it is not a suppression. His feast is still kept locally, devotion to him is entirely permitted, and the medal carries exactly the meaning it always did. For a journey specifically, St. Raphael is the other traditional intercessor, since the Book of Tobit is one long account of him accompanying a young man on a road.
How to ask their intercession
Ask before the journey rather than during it. The traditional practice is simply to keep the medal in the car or on your person as a reminder to make the request rather than as a charm. The object does not protect anyone; the asking is the point, and a medal you never think about does nothing at all.