The church has just demoted something like a hundred saints, after making fortunes selling little pictures of them. I wonder how many still wear St. Nicholas? They treated him as a saint. It’s like treating Santa Claus as a saint. And all these saints — the saint of the road, to protect you against an accident, now they say he never lived. If he never lived why did they ever start it and yet, hundreds of years ago they started this nonsense, so unnumbered millions of these little icons, little medals. Down south our Cardinal admitted that tens of thousands of these little medals, he had put his seal of approval, the Seal of the Cardinal, on the reverse side of that little medal. When they asked him: “Well, now do you regret it?” he said: “No, it was acceptable then and I did it in good faith.” But whoever started that nonsense started it for a commercial reason and they made unnumbered millions, hundreds of millions in selling them to the many. And what number of millions of people wore them and are still wearing them — and he never existed! They mount them on the front of their car, on their little trucks, on their bikes and now to discover at this late date” I’ve gone out with these friends of mine to greet three fellows who came back from the war. One was a marine; he lost one foot and the arm was completely smashed, one arm. His brother was going into the priesthood and he came back deaf; he was in the army. Another was in the army; he came back with TB. And their mother told me in all innocence and they went along with the mother. “Were it not for St. Christopher they would not have returned.” She really believed it, and they believe it and one was three years going for the priesthood when the war broke and he thought it better to serve his country than to become a priest. Then when he came out he gave up completely and got married and has a nice little family. But he believed it and they believed it and the father and the mother believed it.49 ¶28