While I think it's very neat that he was a Christian, I doubt that the original cropper of the photo was doing it to keep the crucifix out of the picture. It's very common to crop pictures so that you can see things better -- if they'd left the crucifix in, you wouldn't see as much detail in his face, which is very interesting. As a former newspaper editor, I'd have cropped it, too.
One can say "Hey! Isn't this cool, look at the original, here's something we might not have known if we didn't see the original..." etc. without the "revisionist history" accusation.