Did St. Francis really create the “Serenity Prayer”?

As with a number of famous St. Francis quotes, this one is misattributed. The Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote what we now commonly call the “Serenity Prayer” that is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. The earliest version of the prayer comes from a 1927 Christian student newsletter that attributes this prayer to Niebuhr: “Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.” The prayer increased in popularity after a secretary at Alcoholics Anonymous noticed it in a 1941 New York Herald Tribune obituary and began using it in the context of addiction recovery.