The award winning Jesuit app, Pray as you go has launched a new program that allows integration with Amazon’s virtual assistant, Alexa.
The creators of the app hope that this will enable people with a vision impairment or with limited mobility or dexterity to benefit fully from the app.
“Pray As You Go”, an initiative of Jesuit Media Initiatives, receives more than 30 million visits a year to its English language version, which is updated daily with material from experts in the spirituality of St Ignatius of Loyola.
“Alexa”, Amazon’s virtual assistant AI technology, is operated by voice commands, which means that individuals unable to access conventional app technologies due to vision or mobility impairments will be able to fully participate in the spiritual exercises of “Pray As You Go”. Emma Holland, the producer of “Pray As You Go”, said that the initiative to allow Alexa users to access the app stemmed from the feedback of blind and visually impaired users of “Pray As You Go”.
“The great thing about Alexa,” Holland said, “is that it does not require prior knowledge or familiarity with the operating system. All you have to do is to start your prayer session is instruct it by saying: “Alexa, open ‘Pray As You Go’.”
At the moment, only certain elements of the “Pray As You Go” app, such as daily prayers, are available on Alexa, but the producers of the app plan to gradually increase the number of features provided in future.
Emma Holland emphasised the importance of “Pray As You Go” in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, where many Christians have found themselves unable to attend services or physically participate in their faith communities. Daily visits to the app and website have nearly doubled since the beginning of the crisis, and the creators of the app have developed new material appropriate to the current situation. The app now features a “Pray As You Stay” series, new prayers focussed on children and families, and the producers hope to add specific prayers for health workers in the near future.
Launched in 2006 as a podcast and website, and later as a smartphone app, “Pray As You Go” provides spiritual resources to millions of people in over 150 countries and through nine different languages, with the intention of providing a prayer routine compatible with the fast pace of contemporary life. The app offers daily prayers, spiritual exercises, material for mediation and more, all written by Jesuits and other experts in the spirituality of the founder of the Jesuit order, St Ignatius of Loyola.
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