Vatican endorses prayer app, cementing iPhone’s rep as Jesus phone
The iPhone app iBrevity has received sanction from an unwitting source – the Vatican. The app, created by an enterprising Catholic priest brings a collection of daily prayers to your iPhone or iPod Touch.
According to the Baltimore Sun, the app is already the 67th most downloaded app in the store. It’s also pretty affordable, going at the price of 99 cents with English, Spanish, French and Latin language availability. Coming soon will be ports to Portugese and German. The app’s creator, Father Paulo Pedrini, declared that he will be donating whatever profits acquired to charity.
Where came the Vatican endorsement. Well, to be specific, Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications cited the app as an example of the Church “learning to use the new technologies primarily as a tool or as a means of evangelizing, as a way of being able to share its own message with the world.” Certainly great timing around the Christmas season, and even if you haven’t downloaded it before Christmas service, there’s still the New Year services to look forward to.
Perhaps this application is just one of many spiritually-themed apps to hit the iPhone, but the publicity just might encourage more apps of a similar nature. Peruse the App Store, and you will already see apps for various faiths available. What makes it appealing for such apps would be its visibility, not to mention its suitability for multimedia-heavy applications.
It also underscores the ease which developers can create simple applications for the iPhone. If a priest can manage it, then any developer worth his salt should be able to make an iPhone app. Until other platforms make it that easy to develop for, then Apple’s App Store will continue to reign supreme in the mobile market. And it just might help keep the iPhone’s reputation as the “Jesus phone” so noteworthy that even the Vatican is taking notice.
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February 22nd, 2009
I purchase the app but it is in Italian and I need English. How do I change.