The top Catholic app is offering a 3-month free trial to anyone who signs up during the coronavirus pandemic. Hallow, an app which fosters Catholic meditation and prayer, has already become the highest rated Catholic app in digital stores, and now they’re adding more features to keep the faithful connected in these trying times.
Joyce Duriga, from Crux Now, explains that Hallow offers several functions to facilitate daily prayer, such as:
“lectio divina,” which is a meditative way of reading the Bible; a daily “examen”; traditional prayers like the rosary and stations of the cross; and “praylists.”
Their current lineup of activities also include prayer challenges and “minute prayers,” for faithful who only have a moment or two to get to praying. The team at Hallow is also working on a new line of features geared towards those in social isolation, with a “Stuck at home” playlist.
Soon they will add a social media aspect, so that users can pray in a digital community. They hope that this new feature will help families, friends, and church groups practice their faith together while the churches are closed.
Hallow has been downloaded more than 150,000 times across 50 countries and has quickly become the highest rated Catholic app in stores. It is free to download, but for full access to all their features, they charge a subscription fee of $9/month or $60/year. A 7-day free trial has been extended to 3-months during the this time of social isolation.
The app is the product of a group of college friends who were trying to come up with a way to avoid stress in their demanding careers. Alessandro DiSanto, one of Hallow’s founders, told Chicago Catholicthat he had tried several similar secular apps, but their lack of spirituality left DiSanto wanting. He said:
“But the more that I created peace in my life in the sense of absence of activity, the more I realized that what I was actually searching for were deeper questions about purpose and what I should be doing with my life… That was inherently a faith-based question for me, and really not addressed by those secular mediation apps.”
He began developing Hallow with his friend Alex Jones. The two were taken aback with the positive feedback they received from friends and family. DiSanto said they were further encouraged when they were told that their app had inspired someone to seek out a religious vocation.
Seeing the potential of their budding app, they quit their jobs and put together a team, starting their new business thanks to crowdsourced funds through Kickstarter. After just two years, Hallow has been used over one million times for prayer.
Hallow is up and running right now. For information on downloads and subscriptions, click here. For an example of Hallow’s Catholic meditation exercises check out the video below.
And today we celebrate...