The Chaplet of Divine Mercy

The Chaplet of Divine Mercy is a small free app that does one thing: it leads you through the chaplet with audio, start to finish, in about ten minutes.

The prayers appear on screen while a voice reads them aloud. The audio is synthesized — it uses the voices already built into your phone rather than a recording of a person praying. You follow along on the beads of the screen or your own rosary, and the app keeps the order straight: the opening prayers, the decades on God's mercy, the closing Holy God prayer.

I'll be honest about the voice. A computer voice praying takes getting used to, and some people never warm to it. But there's a practical upside: it never rushes, it never drags, and the words are always right there on screen. If you've wanted to pray the chaplet but keep losing your place between the "Eternal Father" and the "For the sake of His sorrowful Passion," this solves that.

It's a natural fit for the three o'clock hour, the traditional Hour of Mercy, and a good way to learn the chaplet if it's new to you. Ten minutes is short enough to keep daily, even on full days. Anyone drawn to the Divine Mercy devotion St. Faustina gave us will find this a steady companion.

It's not a full prayer app — no rosary, no novenas, no daily readings, just the chaplet. And if synthesized audio bothers you, there are apps with recorded human voices that may sit better, though usually with more clutter around them. With a 4.8 rating from several hundred users, plenty of people have made their peace with the voice.

Free, from Teaminformatico Apps. Get it on the App Store: The Chaplet of Divine Mercy. For ten minutes a day, it earns its place on the phone.