ViaCrucis Catholic

ViaCrucis Catholic is an app for praying the Stations of the Cross. You move through the fourteen stations one at a time, with a picture and a meditation for each.

Every station gives you an HD image of the scene and text to pray and reflect on. The app comes in six languages — English, Spanish, German, Portuguese, French, and Italian — so you can pray it in your own tongue or the one you grew up with. There is a Lent calendar built in, a Lenten message from the Pope, and a full-screen reading mode if you want the words larger or the picture bigger. You can change the font too.

I have used apps like this during Lent, and the thing that matters most is whether they slow you down. This one does. The images give you something to rest your eyes on while you pray, and moving station to station by hand keeps you from rushing. Friday is the traditional day for the Stations, and this is an easy thing to keep on your phone for that.

Good for Lent, of course, but also for any Friday, for someone who cannot get to a church that has the Stations, or for praying with the family at home. The multiple languages make it handy in a parish with people from different places.

What it is not: fancy. The design is plain, and a couple of the promised features like alarms and notifications were still listed as coming soon. That is fine for what this is — a prayer aid, not a polished production.

Free, from developer Jorge Panayotti. Available on the App Store: ViaCrucis Catholic. A simple, solid way to pray the Stations wherever you are.