The Catholic Church has created a game app to "catch" saints

Go out and evangelize! At least, this is the last word of the Catholic Church after the launch, by an associated organization, of a new application, called "Follow JC Go" (JC), which allows the faithful to participate in religious activities on their smartphone. .

Following JC Go helps users discover biblical figures and icons, literally saints represented by stylized cartoons. Follow in the footsteps of the popular Pokémon Go game in augmented reality, in which players try to catch creatures like Pikachu. – as they wander in the cities. They will interact with the virtual holy characters and add them to an "evangelism team," provided that they correctly answer certain questions referring to the Bible story. Gameifying religion: just the next offering of the Catholic Church. A promotional video suggests that players can earn points and compete with friends, collect "electronic teams" of believers, and even find nearby churches and "make the trip more fun" while playing.

The application was developed and launched by the Ramon Pane Foundation, with the aim of involving young people in evangelism. And they even received the blessing of the pope himself with the project.

"You know, Francis is not very technological, but he was impressed, he understood the idea, what we were trying to do: to associate technology with evangelism," said Ricardo Grzona, executive director of the foundation, to religious information. outlet Crux Now. "Never has the Church had a project like this. This is the Catholic application with the most advanced technology. Initially launched in Spanish, they plan to expand language options to include English, Italian and Portuguese in the coming weeks. It's free and available for iOS and Android because the church apparently hosts players from all operating systems. Although it has so far a rating of 3.8 stars on the App Store, reviews are inconclusive so far.