Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

The attribution to St Francis is almost assuredly an artifact of being reprinted on the back of a post card of his image. In that regard it is like the Gospels of the New Testament; historically inaccurate but "truly" inspired.

I have always had a soft spot for the Franciscans but no less so after reading Umberto Eco's "Name of the Rose" (the movie is great too). In the movie the Franciscans debate emissaries from Rome on the subject, "Did Christ own the clothes he wore?".

The reconstruction of St Francis beginning at the end of the 19th Century casts Francis as the patron saint of wildlife and an opponent of "property" and "institutionalized religion". In that light he might be better cast as the patron saint of environmentalists". In a convenient argument, the reconstruct ors argue that the church ("institutionalized religion") destroyed much of his writings.

But even as myth, the story has power. The boys in the 4th Century did not get it right. The canon of sacred texts is measured by those we find truly inspired. Religion is corrigible but depends on the mytics and heretics so hated by the "church".