The Prayer of St Francis

The Prayer of St Francis

I was looking into the "Prayer of St Francis" ("Make me a Channel of Your Peace"....) which draws inspiration from St Francis, but which I suspected that he probably never used at all (unlike the Canticle of the Sun, which he did compose, and which appears in narratives written in or around his lifetime).

The popular musical version, is actually the work of Sebastian Temple.

http://www.ocp.org/en/people/11853.php

But the origin goes back further. Its an interesting and inspiring story. This site has information on its origin:

http://www.franciscan-archive.org/franciscana/peace.html

The first appearance of the Peace Prayer occurred in France in 1912 in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette (The Little Bell). It was published in Paris by a Catholic association known as La Ligue de la Sainte-Messe (The Holy Mass League), founded in 1901 by a French priest, Father Esther Bouquerel (1855-1923). The prayer bore the title of 'Belle prière à faire pendant la messe' (A Beautiful Prayer to Say During the Mass), and was published anonymously. The author could possibly have been Father Bouquerel himself, but the identity of the author remains a mystery.

The prayer was sent in French to Pope Benedict XV in 1915 by the French Marquis Stanislas de La Rochethulon. This was soon followed by its 1916 appearance, in Italian, in L'Osservatore Romano [the Vatican's daily newspaper]. Around 1920, the prayer was printed by a French Franciscan priest on the back of an image of St. Francis with the title 'Prière pour la paix' (Prayer for Peace) but without being attributed to the saint. Between the two world wars, the prayer circulated in Europe and was translated into English. Its has been attributed the first time to saint Francis in 1927 by a French Protestant Movement, Les Chevaliers du Prince de la Paix (The Knights of the Prince of Peace), founded by Étienne Bach (1892-1986).