Vatican Gives Blessing To iTunes Prayer App

iBreviary, an iTunes application created by a 35-year-old tech savvy Italian priest, Rev. Paolo Padrini and Italian Web developer Dimitri Giani, has gained the support of The Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications, according to the Associated Press. Prayers are offered in Latin, English, French, Italian and Spanish.

There have been 8,000 downloads of the program since it was launched three weeks ago on iTunes, according to the Catholic weekly, America. Future plans call for the addition of audio, such as Gregorian chants.

On Giani’s Web site, Rev. Padrini noted that for centuries the Catholic church has sought to recover important prayers and has been building a book of daily prayer, called "Breviary.”

“iBreviary allows Christian Catholic believers to pray with simplicity through an intuitive interface,” said Rev. Padrini. “Every day, linking up with the iPhone, [iBreviary] will propose the daily prayers of the Catholic Breviary.”

There is a fee of 0.79 for downloads to fund the mobile prayer program, Rev. Padrini said.

“iBreviary is growing and with it the need for continuous development in order to make this program a more complete mobile multimedia support and the Christian prayer,” he said. "[The] iBreviary initiative will support a charity for young people sponsored by my parish.”

Prayer mobility is not a new idea, but has gained increasing endorsement from the Catholic Church.

In 2006, London-based Jesuit Media Initiatives, created “Prayer-As-You-Go,” which offers daily prayers for MP3 players.

In October 2008, Catholic bishops attending a Vatican meeting “called for increased distribution of the Bible "in the largest variety of our planet's languages,"” reported news outlet AFP. The bishops said that printed text was no longer sufficient in a world that that communicates more and more through technology.

"The voice of the divine word must also resonate over the radio, Internet channels with virtual online distribution, CDs, DVDs and iPod,” the AFP said, quoting the bishops.