Now, a confession app on iPhones, iPads approved by Catholic Church

WELLINGTON - A US company has come up with a confession app that claims to be the first of its kind to be approved by the Catholic Church.

Patrick Leinen, of the three-man team Little iApps, a company “with a Roman Catholic twist”, said his team had wanted to engage Catholics with new media in response to the Pope’s World Communications Address last year, in which he spoke of its potential benefits.

Confession: A Roman Catholic App for iPhones and iPads is touted as the “perfect aid for every penitent”, and it has been designed to be taken into the confessional.

It creates a customised and password-protected “examination of conscience” based on a person’s age, sex, vocation and the time elapsed, in days, weeks, months or years, since the last confession.

It also has seven acts of contrition to choose from, all for 1.99 dollars.

“Our bishop was very excited about it. We were able to work with several priests in order to get that examination of conscience created, so it was kind of fun,” Stuff.co.nz quoted Leinen as saying.

Bishop Kevin Rhoades went as far as to grant it an imprimatur - official endorsement from a church authority.

“The imprimatur itself was pretty neat,” Leinan said.

“When we were actually testing out the software before release we had one gentleman who hadn’t been to confession in about 20 years. He went in and did his confession with it and he said it made it much easier on him,” he added. (ANI)