Church goes digital: Mobile 'priest locator' App for 24-hour confessional takes off
Sunday, December 11, 2016 @ 10:37 PM
A PRIEST has designed a mobile phone App for parishioners with a guilty complex to help them find their nearest confessional at any time of the day or night – and says he even has members of his congregation asking about their moral dilemmas via WhatsApp.
Ricardo Latorre says the Confesor Go App is not designed for Catholics to make their confessions by text message - “that would be sacrilege,” he insists – but its built-in GPS locator informs users in real time where their nearest vicar is, his name (since Roman Catholic priests cannot, as yet, be women), age, year he was ordained, and languages he is able to take confessions in.
It even gives a photograph so that he can be easily recognised if he is currently in a public place.
Vicars can then change their status to 'available' or 'busy' according to what they are doing at the time.
Said to be simple to use, Confesor Go has a separate tab titled En el mapa ('on the map') showing geo-locator tags for the various available priests, although parishioners can search Por cercanía ('sort by nearest'), with a Google Map function indicating how to get there and how many kilometres away the vicar is, or Por provincias ('sort by provinces') if the worshipper is prepared to travel.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com