How to use Catholic Community

Catholic Community is a place where Catholics from many countries pray together, share prayers, testimonies and other content, form groups, and hold live meetings by voice. It is free to use.

Creating your account

1. Open catholicapp.org in your web browser, or install the application from the Play Store or the App Store by searching for Catholic Community.
2. Choose Join free.
3. Enter your name, your email address and a password. Choose your country, your diocese and your parish if you know them.
4. Choose two security questions. These allow you to recover your account if you forget your password. Please write your answers down somewhere safe.
5. Your account is created immediately. You may add a photograph at any time afterwards.

Signing in later

Use the same email address and password. If you forget your password, choose Forgot password on the sign in page and follow the instructions.

The whole site is available in English and in French. Every button, every message and every notification will appear in the language you choose.

1. Open the menu at the top right of the home page.
2. Choose Profile settings.
3. Select your language and save.

You may also change the language at the bottom of this page, or on the sign in page, before you have an account.

The home page shows what other members have shared. You may post whatever builds up the community: a prayer, a testimony, a reflection, a question, an announcement, a photograph, a video, an audio recording or a document.

1. Choose Post at the bottom of the screen.
2. Write your message. You may attach a photograph, a video, a document or an audio recording if you wish.
3. Choose Share.

Your post is reviewed before it appears publicly. This protects the community from unsuitable material and is not a judgement upon you.

The prayer wall

The prayer wall is for short prayer intentions. Write what you would like others to pray for. Other members may pray for your intention and let you know that they have done so.

A group is a smaller community within Catholic Community. A group may belong to a parish, a movement, a family or a course of study. Groups have their own conversation, and meetings are held inside them.

There is no fixed limit upon the number of people in a group. A group may hold several thousand members. Groups on this platform already hold many hundreds, and the notifications are delivered in a manner that keeps very large groups working without delay.

Joining a group

1. Choose Groups at the bottom of the screen.
2. Look through the groups shown, or use the search box to find one by name.
3. Choose Join. If the group is private, choose Request, and an administrator of that group will consider your request.

Some groups can only be entered with an access code. The next section explains those.

Starting your own group

1. Choose New group on the Groups page, or open Messages and choose to create a group.
2. Give the group a name and a short description.
3. Choose whether the group is public, which means anyone may join, or private, which means you approve each person.
4. Decide whether the group should be listed publicly in the group directory, so that other members can find it. This is explained below.
5. Choose Create.

Listing a group publicly

When you create a group you may ask for it to be listed in the public directory, where any member may find it. A request to be listed is reviewed by the administrators of Catholic Community before the group appears there. This keeps the directory trustworthy.

If you do not ask to be listed, your group still works in every way. You may invite people with its invitation link or its access code. A family group, a parish council or a class does not need to be advertised to anyone.

You may ask for a listing later, or withdraw one, from the group information page. Open the group, tap its name at the top, and look under Groups directory.

An access code is a short word of six characters, for example ROSA24, that opens a particular group. The leader of the group gives the code to the people who should be in it. The code may be announced at Mass, printed on a leaflet, or written in a parish bulletin.

Joining with a code

1. Choose Groups at the bottom of the screen.
2. Find the group. A group that requires a code shows a key symbol and the words Enter code to join.
3. Type the code exactly as you received it and choose Join.
4. If the code is correct you enter the group at once. There is no waiting and no request.

If the code is refused, please check it carefully. Letters and numbers are easily confused when they are written by hand. If it is still refused, ask the leader of the group for the current code, because a leader may change it at any time.

For group leaders

To require a code for your own group, open the group, tap its name at the top, and look under Access code. You may create a code, replace it with a new one, or turn the requirement off. When you replace a code, the previous one stops working immediately.

A meeting room is a live meeting held by voice, inside a group. A group may use it for whatever it needs: the Rosary, a novena, a catechism class, a Bible study, a choir rehearsal, a council meeting, a training session or an announcement to the whole community. Anyone in the group may listen. The person leading decides who may speak.

Joining a meeting

1. Open your group conversation.
2. When a meeting is live, a red bar appears at the top of the conversation. Tap that red bar.
3. You will enter as a listener. Your microphone is switched off, so nobody will hear any noise from your side.

To see meetings that are planned for a later time, tap the name of the group at the top of the conversation, then choose Meetings.

While you are listening

• You may lock your telephone or put it face down. The prayer continues to play.
• To ask to speak, choose Raise hand. Hands are answered in the order in which they were raised.
• To say Amen, choose the praying hands. Everyone in the meeting will see it.
• To send a prayer intention, choose the dove. Your intention goes privately to the person leading, who will pray it aloud. It is not shown to the meeting, and it is deleted when the meeting ends.
• If your connection is lost, the application will rejoin the meeting by itself when the connection returns.

How many people may attend

A meeting room is built for large gatherings. Only the people who have been given the floor send sound. Everybody else receives it. This is what allows one room to hold well over one thousand listeners, and two thousand or more, without the meeting becoming difficult to follow.

The list of names shown on your screen stops at sixty, so that the page remains readable upon a telephone. Everybody else is present and hearing the meeting, and the true number of participants is always shown.

Who may start a meeting

A meeting is started by the owner of the group, or by one of the administrators of that group. The person who starts it leads it, and the other administrators of the group may lead it as well.

If you would like to lead meetings in a group, ask the owner of that group to make you an administrator. The owner opens the group, taps the name of the group at the top, finds your name in the list of members, and chooses Make admin.

You do not need to be an administrator in order to speak. Any member may speak during a meeting once the person leading gives them the floor.

Leading a meeting

1. Open your group conversation and tap the name of the group at the top.
2. Choose Meetings, then choose to start a meeting.
3. Give the meeting a name, for example Evening Rosary.
4. Choose whether it begins now or at a later time. If it is at a later time, every member will see that time in their own time zone, wherever they live.
5. Choose whether the meeting repeats every week.
6. Choose Start.

While leading, you may give the floor to a person who raised a hand, take the floor back, open the floor to everyone, or remove a person who is disturbing the meeting. Your queue of prayer intentions is marked with a dove and a number.

Recording

A meeting can only be recorded if the person creating it declared, at the moment of creation, that it may be recorded. A meeting that was not declared in this way can never be recorded.

• A meeting that may be recorded carries the words May be recorded on every page that leads into it, before you decide to enter.
• While a recording is actually being made, a red indicator marked REC is shown to everyone in the meeting, including those who arrive late and those who are visiting without an account.
• When the recording ends, it is placed in the group conversation as a voice message, so that members who could not attend may listen afterwards.

You may write privately to another member, or hold a conversation in a group. Choose Messages to see your conversations.

Sending a message

1. Open Messages and choose the person or the group.
2. Write in the box at the bottom and choose the send symbol.
3. To attach a photograph, a video or a document, choose the paper clip.
4. To record your voice, choose the microphone, speak, and then listen to it before you send it.

Doing more with a message

Press and hold any message. A list of actions appears. You may reply to it, copy it, forward it to somebody else, keep it with a star so that you can find it again, or react to it with a symbol such as praying hands. If the message is yours, you may edit or delete it.

Voice calls

In a private conversation, choose the telephone symbol at the top to call that person. The call is between the two of you. Calls are never recorded.

• Hold the telephone to your ear as you would for an ordinary call, or choose the loudspeaker symbol to let others in the room hear.
• Bluetooth earphones may be used. It is best to connect them before the call begins.
• If you do not wish to receive calls at all, you may switch them off. Open Profile settings and look for the setting for calls.

Notifications tell you when somebody writes to you, comments on your post, calls you, or begins a meeting.

If you are using the application and you notice a message asking you to switch notifications on, please do so. Without notifications you will not know that somebody has written to you until you open the application yourself.

Being told when a meeting begins

On the page of a meeting that is planned for a later time, choose Notify me. Your telephone will alert you at the moment the meeting begins.

If a group is too busy

You may silence a single group without leaving it. Open the group, tap its name at the top, and choose Mute. You will still see the messages when you open the group.

Catholic Community is a place of prayer. A small number of people join such places in order to deceive others, and we take this seriously.

Reporting a person or a message

1. Press and hold the message, or open the menu at the top of the conversation.
2. Choose Report.
3. Describe briefly what happened. A moderator will read it.

If you are unsure

There is also a quieter option, for when you are not certain enough to accuse anybody. Open the menu at the top of a private conversation and choose the option that says you are not sure about this person. Nothing is said to that person, and nothing changes in your conversation. A moderator simply sees your note, and can see whether other members have felt the same about the same person.

Blocking

You may block a person at any time from the menu at the top of your conversation with them. They will not be able to write to you or call you.

Controlling who may contact you

Open Profile settings. You may decide who is able to send you messages, and you may switch off incoming calls. You may also make your profile private, so that only the people who follow you can see what you share.

Changing your details

Open Profile settings to change your name, your photograph, your description, your parish or your language.

Deleting your account

You may delete your account yourself, at any time, from your profile page. Deletion removes your personal information, your posts, your comments and your other content. Where you have written to another person, the message remains in that person conversation, but it is no longer connected to your name.

Catholic Community works in any web browser. There is also an application for Android telephones and an application for iPhone. Search for Catholic Community in the Play Store or in the App Store.

The application is recommended for three reasons. It alerts you when somebody writes to you or a meeting begins. It allows a meeting to continue playing when your screen is switched off. It allows voice calls to sound as an ordinary telephone call does.

When a new version is available, the application will tell you. Please accept these updates, because they often carry corrections that other members have helped us to find.

If something on this site does not work as this guide describes, or if you cannot find what you need, please write to us at support@maryourhelp.org. Please describe what you were doing and what happened. If you are able to include a photograph of your screen, that helps us considerably.

Catholic Community is operated by Mary Our Help Ministry.