South Korea’s Catholic Church has launched a mobile application to provide its members greater convenience in their religious life, such as access to the Bible, downloading their baptism certificate, making offerings, and recording their pilgrimages using a QR code.
The National Conference of Catholic Priests for Computerisation (NCCPC) is behind the development of Catholic Hasang, which was released ahead of Easter.
The app is currently available in all the parishes of the Archdiocese of Seoul, but will soon be accessible in all the other dioceses.
Thanks to this app, South Korean Catholics will be able to make their offering at Mass not only in cash but also via their mobile phone using Catholic Pay, a mobile payment system included in Catholic Hasang.
But that is not all. By subscribing to the application, Catholics will be automatically connected to the registers of all the Catholic churches in the country, as well as personal records.
Other data related to the life of the Church can also be recorded via the app. Once collected and processed anonymously, they can become useful for statistical purposes in parishes, dioceses and the whole Church.
South Korea’s Catholic Church is the first in the world with an app of this type, this according to NCCPC President Fr Dominic Choi Jang Min
The app’s name, Catholic Hasang, is taken from Saint Paul Chong Hasang, one of the Korean martyrs who at the start of the 19th century actively organised the life of the Catholic community at a time of persecution.