Quote
“It’s a tool for collaboration in the parish and it’s a tool for the new evangelization.”
| Brandon Kuboushek, a member of the parish evangelization committee at Holy Spirit Parish in Dubuque, Iowa, which in unveiling its app earlier this year joined the effort by more parishes nationwide to reach out to the faithful on mobile platforms. (Catholic News Service)
In the news
Tithing through technology
SAN FRANCISO – The Archdiocese of San Francisco is banking on a Silicon Valley startup called Evergive to make fundraising quick, easy and rewarding with a free, faith-based computer app that officially launched May 15 for the archdiocesan community.
Evergive is just “one more way” faith communities can give to the church, including writing a check, donating online and using the collection basket, Basilian Father Anthony Giampietro, the archdiocese’s interim director of development, told Catholic San Francisco, the archdiocesan newspaper.
The Palo Alto-based Evergive is targeting a new generation of Catholics who occupy digital communities and use their smartphones or computers for social and financial transactions.
“We know many of our young parishioners don’t even have a checkbook anymore,” he said.
“A hundred years ago, a church was the central hub of a community,” said Evergive CEO and co-founder James Ioannidis. “Now they’re engulfed in this digital realm. There needs to be a new platform that supports these things. We want to bring the parish experience to the smartphone.” (CNS)
Saints under 35
Doing the Lord’s work
St. Mariam Baouardy, who was canonized May 17 by Pope Francis along with Mother Marie-Alphonsine Ghattas, faced many hardships throughout her life but bore them with the strength of her love of Jesus and Mary.
Born into a Greek Catholic family in a Holy Land village near Nazareth, Mariam was intensely devoted to her faith as a child — even resisting the commands and protests of her relatives. She entered religious life as a teenager and was known to receive mystical graces including the stigmata, ecstacies and levitation, which alarmed some of her religious peers but inspired others.
Before an infection claimed her life in 1878 at age 32, Mariam was instrumental in helping establish a Carmelite convent in Bethlehem. She was beatified in 1983. (carmelitesisters.ie)