Pope Francis launches app Missio as Vatican Church embraces smartphone era

Pope Francis and the US Pontifical Mission Societies have joined the smartphone league by launching a new mobile application called Missio featuring latest news and video about the Catholic Church.

Marking a unique connection between the digital and the religious, the application is designed to give Catholic perspectives on world news and also moral discourses by the Pope, New York Daily News reports.

According to the report, around 1140 people from 27 different countries have already downloaded Missio which refers to the Latin word for 'mission'.

They will now be able to download news stories and photographs from News.va, the Vatican's news agency and FIDES, the Pontifical Mission Societies' news agency.

US director of the Pontifical Mission Societies Father Andrew Small said that the Church intends to put the gospel in the pocket of every young person in the world, adding that people should be allowed to understand the world through faith while they flip on their phones, check mails, news and Twitter feeds on a daily basis.

Stating that the Pope has already gathered more than 2 million followers on his Twitter account, Small also said that the new app will provide for a new way for the Pope to reach out to the global Catholic community.

Small further said that the app is meant to be a supplement to the church's daily work on the ground in missions across the world.

The application software can be downloaded for free on the iTunes App Store and on Google Play and is available in eight different languages such as English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Portuguese, Chinese and Arabic, the report added.