Seven years ago, three friends turned away from successful corporate careers to develop an app that would help bring the lost sheep back to the Catholic faith.
And clearly, it was something the world needed.
Today, Hallow is the number one Catholic app and prayer app in the world, with 32 million users and nearly 1.5 million prayers prayed with the app.
Still, it’s always been about “the one” for co-founders Alessandro DiSanto, Alex Jones and Erich Kerekes, who developed the app “to leave the 99 and to go find the one – the fallen away, the forgotten,” said DiSanto, a 2011 graduate of Bishop McDevitt High School.
“We wanted the app to speak not just to daily Mass goers, priests and bishops, but to really reach into the culture and find the lost sheep,” he said.
It was a mission that evolved from the trio’s own experiences. Jones, who grew up Catholic, had fallen away from the Church and became an atheist; DiSanto, though he had a clear understanding of the Catholic faith, hadn’t developed a personal relationship with God. The app was an answer to their own questions of how to pray and build a relationship with God.
Hallow has grown exponentially with its myriad of prayer resources, podcasts, daily meditations and reflections, and its onboarding of Catholic podcasters like Father Mike Schmitz, Jeff Cavins and Jonathan Roumie. Celebrity participants such as Mark Wahlberg, Gwen Stefani and Chris Pratt have also attracted users.
The app’s appeal outside of the Catholic Church can’t be understated; upwards of 50 percent of new users do not identify as Catholic.
Last month, the Hallow co-founders were presented with the Christifideles Laici Award at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, recognizing their fidelity to the Church and exemplary service in the Lord’s vineyard.
The award is named for Pope St. John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic exhortation, Christifideles Laici, which calls upon the faithful to “stir and promote a deeper awareness among all the faithful of the gift and responsibility they share, both as a group and as individuals, in the communion and mission of the Church.”
Catholic legal and policy expert Mary FioRito presented the award to DiSanto, Jones and Kerekes at the prayer breakfast on March 19 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. A video of the presentation can be found at this link.
“One of the most humbling parts of receiving this award is that it is named after one of the writings of St. John Paul II, who had this aspiration that one of the fruits of the new evangelization in light of the Second Vatican Council would be the rising of the laity to evangelize the culture from within,” DiSanto told The Witness.
“I do think that in this increasingly secular world, where the institutional Church is under attack in many different ways, there really is an obligation for each of us as lay people to rise up to Christ’s call for us,” he said.
Available in the App Store and at www.hallow.com, the app is bursting with content on how to pray (including daily prayers, the Rosary, novenas and chaplets), and daily readings, meditations, the saints and podcasts. There’s also content for the liturgical season, daily challenges, practices for mental health, and music for reflection and sleep.
“Nobody needs an app to pray; prayer happens in the silence of our own hearts and personal relationship with God,” DiSanto said. “But in the same way that you don’t need a gym membership or personal trainer to become physically fit, it can also be helpful to have those things for development and accountability. And so the way we approach Hallow is to bring the best of what we have in the world of technology to help people ultimately accomplish their goals of developing a relationship with God.”
“The only thing we need to change the world and bring the kingdom of heaven a little bit closer to earth is for each of us to answer those very specific calls,” he said. “If we with Hallow can play just some small and specific inspirational role for some lay person out there to recognize that they too are called to lead in the Church, that’s the honor of a lifetime.”
(Photos courtesy of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.)
By Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness
