June 22, 2010

Italian priest Father Paolo Padrini, who developed the iBreviary app two years ago will be launching a new app that will allow priests to celebrate Mass with an iPad on the altar instead of a printed Roman Missal.

Fr Padrini, a consultant with the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Social Communications, said the free application will be launched in July in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Latin, said an AP report on goldcoast.com.au.

The application contains the complete missal, including all that is said and sung during Mass throughout the liturgical year. Upgrades are expected to feature audio as well as commentaries and suggestions for homilies as well as musical accompaniment, he said.

It is similar to the iBreviary, which brought the book of daily prayers used by priests onto iPhones. See http://g.adspeed.net/ad.php?do=clk&zid=16358&wd=250&ht=250&pair=as.

"Paper books will never disappear," he said in a phone interview from his home parish in Tortona, in Italy's northern Piemonte region.

But at the same time "we shouldn't be scandalised that on altars there are these instruments in support of prayer."

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