Priest launches iPad app to keep record of church Mass

MELBOURNE - Now there is an iPad application ‘iBreviary’ that will keep a record of what all is said and sung during Mass.

An Italian priest Paolo Padrini has created iBreviary to let priests celebrate Mass with an iPad on the altar instead of the regular Roman missal.

The Rev. Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, tells the free application in various languages including English, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin will be launched in July.

Two years ago, Padrini developed the application, which brought the book of daily prayers used by priests onto iPhones and he tells, till date, some 00,000 people have downloaded the application.

The iPad application is also similar, but in addition, contains the complete missal - including all that is said and sung during Mass throughout the liturgical year.

Padrini said that upgrades are expected to feature audio as well as commentaries and suggestions for homilies as well as musical accompaniment.

“Paper books will never disappear,” News.com.au quoted him as saying from his home parish in Tortona, in Italy’s northern Piemnte region.

But at the same time “we shouldn’t be scandalised that on altars there are these instruments in support of prayer”, he added.

On the success of the iBreviary, Padrini was recruited by the Vatican to oversee its youth outreach program in the new media, www.pope2you.net.

He stressed that the application was launched at his own instigation and with his own money and is not an official Vatican initiative.

Vatican officials have previously praised the iBreviary as a novel way of evangelising. (ANI)