Talk:Prayer of Saint Francis

Prayer of Saint Francis has been listed as one of the Philosophy and religion good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it. Review: June 5, 2017. (Reviewed version).

A fact from Prayer of Saint Francis appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 3 July 2017 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows: Did you know... that the "Prayer of Saint Francis" is a 20th-century peace prayer mistakenly attributed to the 13th-century saint? A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2017/July. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Prayer of Saint Francis.

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Archive 1

Any thoughts on whether this article should be renamed, and if so, what it should be changed to? Much as I am a fan of both the prayer and of St. Francis of Assisi, it is pretty well established that he didn't write it, and it seems Wikipedia is propagating an inaccuracy by having the prayer in an article titled under his name. As for what to rename it to, maybe the lack of an obvious answer is the reason it hasn't already been changed. I've seen it titled The Peace Prayer, but other suggestions are welcome. --Mwalimu59 16:43, 16 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That is a very good idea, since it is confirmed by studies that the prayer was just printed on the backside of a picture of St. Francis around 1912 1920 in the wake of World War I. But there could be a redirection from the old title, since many people still search for the text under this name, and there should be a definite correction within the text that states that St. Francis is not the author. Sr. F (--217.86.117.199, 21:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC))[reply]

I think that the current title is fine. Accurately or inaccurately, the prayer is commonly referred to, and known, as the Prayer of Saint Francis. Within the article, mention should be made of whether or not Saint Francis did indeed author the prayer. Assuming that Saint Francis did not author this prayer, and that its title is a misnomer, "Prayer of Saint Francis" is nonetheless the commonly known, accepted, and used title. (Joseph A. Spadaro 02:51, 28 May 2007 (UTC))[reply]

the above comments are intereting though the lives of those i have been lucky, yes luck as you wish to define it, such people living by this prayer and the teaching of st francis, whether historical or myth of such a life are continance of whatever christianity pretends to search for in all variations.Such people try to prove by their compasion and understanding of the isolation of individulas within the corperate world of profit. There is room in the universe for science and compasion —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.106.216.215 (talk) 01:40, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Belated thanks for the comments. The renaming question came up again in 2014 (see

WP:RECOGNIZABLE title despite its inaccuracy. —Patrug (talk) 11:48, 4 March 2017 (UTC)[reply

]

• Ryan Cayabyab

back into the article's alphabetical list with a suitable citation. —Patrug (talk) 09:13, 10 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a good Wikipedia-approved way of editing the section on possible English-version copyright? I'm the senior editor of Friends Journal, the successor publication to Friends Intelligencer and we've long ceded copyright for anything published before 1955. I'm happy to edit the piece but I don't have an outside link to point to. I could publish a page on our website saying we don't have copyright. Does anyone know if that would be sufficient? Martin kelley (talk) 16:04, 24 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Martin kelley: Thanks very much for this information. Now that it's here on the Talk page, I've trimmed the parenthetical note that's no longer needed in the article text. It would indeed be useful for FriendsJournal.org to post a statement saying that the copyrights of its pre-1955 predecessors were not renewed — or whatever you determine the precise status to be. Our Wikipedia article currently links to a partial scan of the 1927 prayer on Google Books, and also links to a full reprint on QuoteInvestigator.com, so it's reassuring to know that neither is infringing a current copyright. Thanks again. —Patrug (talk) 08:09, 27 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Martin kelley: Any chance that the journal's records give any clues to the source for the prayer in 1927? —Patrug (talk) 08:59, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

@Patrug: Oh dear, what a bad Wikipedia responder I am! I've added a note on the Friends Journal permissions page explicitly relinquishing any copyright claims to our predecessor magazines. https://www.friendsjournal.org/permission-to-reprint/ . I don't have any information on how the prayer got there. To me this looks like someone needed to fill a last-minute empty space in the layout. American Friends were very involved in relief work following the First World War and could have easily come across Father Benoît's holy card. Martin kelley (talk) 16:12, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Prof75, Mwalimu59, Bfpage, Qowieury, and SarekOfVulcan:

Special thanks for your many contributions to this high-traffic article over the years, helping to inform hundreds of readers every day, and over a million in total. I've done some further work to improve the text & references & multimedia. Once the article is stable for a few weeks with no major objections, I think it'll be strong enough to nominate for official

• Prof75 (and also Prof.C.R. if you're not the same person): Thank you for sharing the important research findings in the 2001 book. If possible, I'd like to expand this Wikipedia article with even more information from the book. For those of us who cannot read French or Italian without computer translation, do you know of any complete electronic copy that I might be able to use temporarily to read a crude translation by computer?
• Mwalimu59: Thank you for watching over the article for a decade and patiently cleaning up after unconstructive edits. For a page that gets hundreds of viewers per day, it's a great help that you've been able to patrol & repair problems within hours. With your long-term perspective on the article, I think you should be pleased with the current version?
• Bfpage & Qowieury: Thank you both for improving the level of sourcing for the article. I've continued the effort, and in particular I've tried to include video references only when consistent with the guidance in
  WP:COPYLINK
  violations. See if you're OK with the current set of citations?
• SarekOfVulcan: Thanks for your diligent efforts to steer the article around copyright infringement and other policy issues. It would be great to break the endless cycle of well-intentioned editors adding/changing/deleting different texts of the Peace Prayer. My current version presents the complete original text (1912, in French, footnoted, copyright expired), alongside a literal line-by-line English translation that my computer & I prepared for the article, reasonably consistent with previous English translations but not violating the copyright of any. I hope this approach finally stabilizes the article and satisfies your concerns?

Further suggestions are welcome from everyone. Thanks again. —Patrug (talk) 07:48, 21 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Works for me. My only remaining concern is to standardize what it's called throughout. While I've argued for the "Prayer of Saint Francis" title before on the grounds that it's probably the most well-known title, I know it's not the most accurate title we could pick. Whatever title we end with, that's how we should refer to it in the article. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:21, 28 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Good point, thanks. I used the alternate title "Peace Prayer" a few times, because "the prayer" was getting a bit monotonous and "Prayer of St. Francis" was inappropriate for the years before the prayer & saint became associated. But I see your point about being consistent, so I just zapped all mentions of "Peace Prayer" except for the lead sentence and external references. I also added the article to the disambiguation page "Prayer for Peace" and created a re-direct from "Peace Prayer". Hope this helps to keep things straight. —Patrug (talk) 01:10, 29 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

After a stable month with zero revisions from ~20,000 readers, I just posted the "Good Article" nomination. Hope for the best! —Patrug (talk) 04:02, 29 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

This review is

transcluded from Talk:Prayer of Saint Francis/GA1

. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: I'll take this surprising and informative article on. Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:52, 4 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the quick & thorough review & suggestions. I tried to address everything, with brief replies interspersed below. See what you think... Patrug (talk) 06:47, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

I have few if any problems to raise with this clearly-written and well-cited article, and those are very minor, mainly stylistic. Love the work of peace and justice by that warlord William the Conq., btw.

 Question: With peace astonishingly attributed to the conqueror, I pondered adding a phrase like: "without apparent irony" – or would this cross the line from lively prose into inappropriate

WP:Editorializing

?

It's certainly getting close to the line. Prof. Google can't find a suitable source, either.

There's a similar statement at La naissance du Souvenir Normand: "In the mind of Rochethulon and his friend Pierrefitte, Normandy can serve as a bridge to friendship between France and England, enemies of yesterday. But the bells of Corneville did not sound the end of the Hundred Years War. They have not proclaimed Peace."

Upon reflection, though, St. Francis would probably advise not rubbing anyone's nose in it!

The style of adding page numerals in the text to refs is used only for ref 1. It would be much nicer to make this a named Source, and to use Harvard links (e.g. {{sfn|Renoux|2001|pp=27–28}} ... Sources: {{cite book|last=Renoux|date=2001| ...|ref=harv}} ) to keep the numerals tidily within the References section.

 Done. I usually try to avoid Harvard links, so readers won't need to check two sections to assemble the info. But since this article has only one book source with multiple page refs, the {{rp}} citation format was a bit awkward, too. See if the new version looks better to you.

Text: the heading "French original, English translation" isn't perhaps ideal. Why not use these two phrases as column headers in the translation table?

 Done. Nice idea.

Text: "copyright expired" isn't something we should have in the main text. If you feel it must be said, it could go in a footnote ({{efn|The copyright ...}}) or be mentioned at the end of ref 4.

 Question: Actually, this has been a major issue throughout the article's Edit history. Since so many readers are familiar with the prayer, we've had over 100 edits endlessly adding, changing, and deleting different versions of the text. Most of these well-intentioned editors never realized that their favorite versions of a famous prayer would be protected by copyright, so now the article makes this explicit to readers, and notes that the original French version is an exception. On the Talk page, admin SarekOfVulcan agreed with this approach, in the hope of finally breaking the article's cycle of instability & copyvio – and indeed it's been much better in the three months since then. In light of this situation, do you think we could keep the copyright pointers in the text as a "lesser evil"?

Fine, exceptions are right when there are exceptional justifications.

Text: the heading "Consistency with Saint Francis?" is unusual (probably against WP:MOS, but let's not go there) in having a question mark; it would be better phrased without one.

 Done. To maintain neutrality, I just changed it to "Franciscan viewpoints" – see if you like it better.

Text: "friar/historian" is not the finest use of English. Please rephrase it.

 Done. It looks like Father Thompson is often described as a "church historian", so I switched to that.

Text: "the phrasing of the first half of the text is atypically self-oriented" - I presume that this means up to "let me bring joy" as each such sentence contains "que je mette". If this is the intention, I suggest you say so explicitly.

 Done. I had the exact Thompson quote in the footnote, but now I've added the point directly to the text. ("let me...")

Giles of Assisi: why not give his dates in parentheses? That would instantly set him in his time context.

 Done. Along the same lines, I added Francis's dates to the lead.

Sebastian Temple: not sure the parentheses giving his full name work too well. Perhaps this should be cited in a footnote. Actually, is it cited at all? It isn't in ref 10. Maybe we need an additional ref here.

 Question: Good catch – I just added a book ref. This section is the re-direct target of Sebastian Temple and the only place his birth name appears in English WP, unless & until a bio page is created for him. So, it's probably best not to bury it in a footnote. If I trim the text to show just his official name & dates, "Johann Sebastian von Tempelhoff (1928–1997)" without repeating his professional pseudonym "Sebastian Temple" from the subsection header, would it still be clear that both names are referring to the same person? Or just keep the current "Sebastian Temple (Johann Sebastian von Tempelhoff, 1928–1997)" for full clarity?

OK.

Sinéad O'Connor: suggest we gloss her along the lines of "the irish singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor ...".

 Done. I just put "singer", to minimize any misconception that it might be one of her own compositions – and because "singer-songwriter" is the same grammatical fudge as "friar/historian"!

Very good!

"by notable musicians": everything we mention should be notable. Best drop the adj.

"Other notable invocations": as above. Perhaps simply "Invocations".

 Question: According to guidelines like

selection criterion

. For the sake of minimizing future instability & trivia, could we please keep this notability criterion visible to readers?

OK.

"Other notable invocations": the text is formatted as a list. This does not seem necessary here. Why not drop the list bullets and write it up as one or two paragraphs. You might consider using a few subheadings - say, By religious leaders, By politicians, By others.

 Done. This might also help reduce the temptation to add indiscriminate trivia.

Paragraphed and cited text is certainly much less of a "spam magnet" than an uncited bullet-list.

"Saint Teresa of Kolkata" - the article is more familiarly called "Mother Teresa": suggest we use the direct link title. Add "of Calcutta" if you like.

 Done. The text actually matched your suggestion until an unregistered user changed it a few months ago. I just changed it back, to follow the same

WP:RECOGNIZABLE

policy that justifies keeping our title as the misnomer "Prayer of Saint Francis".

Summary

I hope you're pleased by the result of the review, which to my eye is a sharper article. I'm happy to award it a GA now. Excellent work! Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:07, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for lending your expertise, with such an efficient & constructive review. As Francis might or might not have said: Peace be with you! —Patrug (talk) 20:27, 5 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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So, I've been in a wiki-edit war with the Powers That Be regarding my biography of American Composer Olive Dunegan, who was quite prolific in the 1950's and a voice for female composers. I guess the Wiki-editors are sexist because they won't include her name as sufficiently important, despite the fact she sold over a million copies of the sheet music to a setting of this text in the 1950's and it is still performed in concerts and in churches nationwide. The Wikipedia editor gestapo is really doing a disservice to people who do things like write program notes for concerts when her setting is composed. I tried to put her name down as a person who set this text and BAM, I ended up in Wikipedia jail. This has got to stop. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.126.71.24 (talk) 01:15, 1 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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I am not a master of the French language, but it is easy to see that there are mistakes in the English translations of these two sections:

"O Lord, grant that I make seek rather to be consoled as to console,"

"it is in dying that one is awakens to eternal life."

I would also like to see a popular current version of the Prayer, such as found here:

https://www.loyolapress.com/catholic-resources/prayer/traditional-catholic-prayers/saints-prayers/peace-prayer-of-saint-francis

There are quite a few different versions of this prayer, and it would be interesting to have a separate section comparing different versions, what lines are included and which are left out.