7 Questions: Valent Richie

Valent Richie has designed a wide range of Catholic devotional apps which can be purchased on ITunes.   My wife and I often pray using his Scriptural Rosary app, which includes readings from the Knox Bible.  I am thankful that he was willing to take the time to answer the following "7 Questions."

1) What got you interested in producing Catholic apps?

I got interested in producing Catholic apps because I want to solve my own problems. For example, I want to pray the Scriptural Rosary using my iPod touch or iPhone, but accessing websites is not really user friendly. Hence, I develop my own app first and I become passionate in building the app. Thank God that I have the resources necessary to develop apps.

2) Could you talk a bit about the various apps you have developed?

I have developed Scriptural Rosary app, a rosary app with scripture verse in each beads of Hail Mary. For people that prefer a kind of shorter version of rosary, there is Little Crown app. There is also daily meditations for thirty days for various topics, such as Life of Mary, St. Joseph, and Purgatory. And also there is Short Prayers app that helps user to pray with the daily reminders feature (with location based reminder under testing at the moment). And there is few more apps available in the App Store, such as St. Philomena, St. Philip Neri, Advent, and Lent meditations by St. Thomas Aquinas.

3) What goes into the developing an app?  Are there licensing issues that you have to deal with?

I think the content is the most important stuff that goes into developing an app, because the content needs to be inline with what the Catholic Church teaches. So I usually use the contents that have Imprimatur or writing of the saints. I like to read, so I often discover new stuff from The Internet Archive that is in public domain and free to use. Because of this, so far I have not dealt with licensing issues.

The next one would be translating the content into various languages. This is quite challenging because I depend a lot on the users offering help to translate the content, such as into Spanish and French.

4) There are, of course, a number of Catholic apps available, what would you say makes your apps distinct from the others?

I would say what makes my apps distinct are the ease of use, simplicity, and reminders feature. I want each of my apps to solve a particular problem that helps users to strengthen their faith or pray more.

5) What kind of feedback have you received regarding your apps?

I have received many kinds of feedback, positive and negative. But thank God most of them are positive and encouraging me to continue to develop Catholic apps. For example, when Pope Francis was elected, the Scriptural Rosary app is not updated yet and it has prayer for the Pope that should be updated to mention Pope Francis name. Several people gave feedback and asked when the app would be updated, which was a great encouragement for me because it showed my app was used by people.

The App Store also has review feature where users can submit their reviews, and the reviews have been very encouraging for me. But yeah, sometimes I also feel a bit down whenever people post 1 star review because they are not happy for various reasons.

6) Are there any future Catholic apps that you are working on currently?  

There is one daily reflection app that is still pending approval from Apple. I also want to work on meditations on Catholic dogmas app and intercessory network app, where people can post and pray for prayer intentions, if God is willing. Please pray for me!

7) Do you have a favorite verse of Scripture?

There is a few, but one of them is Psalm 51:17, to remind myself to have a humble and contrite heart, because I often offend God with my sins and I need a humble and contrite heart to avoid the temptations around me.