iPad app coming to a Catholic altar near you soon

Jun 21, 2010 by Dan Taylor    1 Comment     Posted under: Technology

Reverend Paolo Padrini has a particularly difficult job. He’s a consultant to an organization that still believes men who love god can’t love women. His job is to consult the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications. In other words – God’s Facebook page admins.

All jokes aside, Padrini does score points for pulling an archaic organization kicking and screaming into the 21st century. He’s developed an iPad application that will allow priests to dispense with the Roman missal, and conduct mass directly from an iPad. The official Vatican approved application is slated for release in July, and will be available in English, French, Spanish, Italian, and Latin.

This, however, isn’t Padrini’s first Vatican themed app, as two years ago he was the driving force behind iBreviary, an app that brought the book of daily prayers used by priests to iPhones around the world. According to Padrini, the application has been downloaded over 200,000 times.

The new iPad focused app will not simply be an upscaling of iBreviary, but rather the complete missal – i.e. the Priest’s script. The initial offering will be text only, but future upgrades are already planned and include audio commentaries and suggested homily themes.

The 36 year old Padrini hails from Northern Italy and expects that priests who travel a great deal will find this newest offering indispensable. He noted that he recently celebrated a mass in a small parish where the missal was, “a small book, a bit dirty, old.”

“If I had had my iPad with me, it would’ve been better than this old, tiny book,” says Padrini.

Since receiving his first iPope Pod in 2006, Emperor Palpatine Pope Benedict XVI has sought to reach out to a younger generation through tools they readily consume: technology. Based on the success of the iBreviary application (being a priest, and Italian probably didn’t hurt), Padrini was recruited by the Vatican to oversee their pope2u.net youth outreach program in the new media realm.

Padrini stresses that this app, just like that of iBreviary is of his own initiative, and not officially endorsed by the Vatican.

That would be far too progressive.