In my recent period of intermittent blogging, one of the topics of interest that I’ve failed to comment on was the launch of the new Pope app. It wasn’t received with anywhere the amount of fanfare as his Twitter account @Pontifex, but it did catch the eye of quite a few folks. So I thought I’d share with you Father Roderick’s review of the app — partly because he’s a much better judge of apps than I am, and, well, that’s a good enough reason.

Father Roderick outlines The Good, The Bad and the Unfinished of the app, but here’s his overall impression:

[D]espite my remarks about the things that could be improved, this is an excellent app, and an amazing achievement of all involved. Definitely a ‘must have’ for any Catholic with an iOS device! The app shows a lot of potential, and I think that everyone is eagerly awaiting future versions of the app for the various mobile platforms.

Father Roderick is not one to blindly praise the Church for its technology efforts, so for him to call it “an amazing achievement” is a pretty glowing review. I’ve got it and my Luddite view would be it’s easy to use and has a lot of good information, but it will continue to improve as more content becomes available. I agree that it’s a “must have” for we Catholic groupies and Benedict groupies. And if you’re reading the Catholic Soapbox, you probably fit into at least one of those groupie categories.