Laudate Catholic App: An Honest Review

The Laudate Catholic app is one of the oldest and most complete free Catholic apps for iPhone and Android: the daily Mass readings, the Liturgy of the Hours in English and Latin, two Bibles, the Rosary and dozens of chaplets, the Stations of the Cross and a large library of prayers, all without a subscription. It is a genuinely Catholic app, made with evident care. What it is not is a traditional app: its calendar, readings and Office are those of the reformed rite, not the Roman rite of 1962. Here is what Laudate contains, where it stands next to the traditional liturgy, and what to use if it is the 1962 books you are looking for.

Laudate at a glance

	Laudate
Developer	Aycka Soft, a small independent developer, maintaining the app since 2012
Price	Free, no subscription; the App Store listing shows no in-app purchases
Platforms	iPhone and iPad (App Store), Android (Google Play)
Languages	English and some eighteen others, including Spanish, French, Italian, German, Polish and Portuguese
Rite followed	The reformed Roman rite (the current calendar, lectionary and Liturgy of the Hours)
Bibles	New American Bible; Douay-Rheims (Challoner revision), readable offline

Its name is the first word of a psalm, Laudate Dominum omnes gentes, "O praise the Lord, all ye nations" (Psalm 116:1, Douay-Rheims), and the app lives up to it in sheer breadth.

What the Laudate app includes

Laudate is less a single prayer tool than a Catholic reference library in the pocket. Its store listing and the reviews we checked describe the following:

• Daily Mass readings, with the saint of the day and short reflections, plus links to live-streamed Masses and several daily meditation podcasts.
• The Liturgy of the Hours, in English, and a separate Latin version.
• A "Latin Mass" section and Latin versions of many prayers alongside the English ones.
• The Rosary, interactive (bead by bead) and in Latin, with the Seven Sorrows Rosary, the Franciscan Crown and the Servite Rosary.
• Chaplets: of St Michael, the Sacred Heart, the Holy Ghost, St Joseph, the Divine Mercy and others.
• Several versions of the Stations of the Cross.
• Two Bibles: the New American Bible and the Douay-Rheims.
• The modern catechism of 1992, with bookmarks, Vatican documents, and guides to confession for different states of life.
• "My Prayers", a space to store your own prayers and sync them across devices.

The breadth is real. The usual criticism in reviews concerns the design: long, crowded menus and an interface that has aged, with a few sections that need a connection. Those are matters of taste and of a small independent project, not of doctrine.

Is the Laudate app free?

Yes. Laudate is free to download on both stores and does not hide its content behind a subscription, which sets it apart from the large commercial prayer apps such as Hallow. For a Catholic who simply wants the readings of the day and a Rosary on the phone at no cost, that is a real merit.

Laudate and the traditional 1962 rite

This is the question most traditional Catholics are really asking, and the answer is plain: Laudate is built on the liturgy as it was reformed after the Second Vatican Council. That is not a criticism of the developer's good faith; it is simply what the app was made to serve. In practice it means four things.

The calendar and the readings. The daily readings follow the post-1969 lectionary, with its three-year Sunday cycle and two-year weekday cycle, in the New American Bible translation. The traditional Roman Missal has a single yearly cycle of Epistles and Gospels, the propers of the Mass proper to each day, and a different calendar, with Septuagesima, the Ember Days and the octaves of Christmas, Easter and Pentecost. Laudate's "saint of the day" is likewise that of the current calendar.

The Office. What Laudate offers is the Liturgy of the Hours, the reformed Office promulgated by Paul VI in 1970, in English and in Latin. The traditional Office is the Divine Office of the Roman Breviary, with its eight hours from Matins to Compline and the whole Psalter prayed each week; the two are different books, not two translations of one book. If it is the old Office you want, our pages on the Breviary and on the reformed Liturgy of the Hours explain the difference in detail.

The Mass. Laudate has a "Latin Mass" section, but it is the daily Mass of the current Missal that the app's readings and calendar follow. Someone who attends the traditional Latin Mass will not find in Laudate the proper of each day according to the 1962 Missal, the texts that a hand missal or a traditional Mass app provides. Our guides to the order of the Tridentine Mass and to the Roman Missal explain what those books contain.

The devotions and the catechism. Laudate's devotional section sets modern devotions next to old ones. The Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, for example, comes from the revelations of St Faustina (died 1938, canonized in 2000); it is not part of the devotional treasury of the 1962 books, and its spread was restricted by the Holy See from 1959 until 1978. Likewise its catechism is the Catechism of 1992. A traditional Catholic reaches for the Catechism of the Council of Trent or that of St Pius X.

Laudate compared with other Catholic apps

Next to the other well-known Catholic apps, Laudate is the generalist. iBreviary and Universalis are more focused on the reformed Office and the readings; Hallow is a polished, largely paid meditation app; Laudate gives you a little of everything, free. All four share one thing: they serve the reformed rite. For the Office alone, our comparison of the best Divine Office apps weighs Laudate against the dedicated breviary apps. Our comparison of the best Catholic prayer apps sets them side by side, and if your question is specifically about the Rosary, our guide to the best rosary apps compares the dedicated ones.

The traditional rite has its own tools. Divinum Officium generates the old Office and Mass for any date on the web, freely and with great care. What it lacks is a form made for the phone.

Iter Fidei: the 1962 rite in the pocket

That gap is the one Iter Fidei was built for. It is an app made solely for the traditional Roman rite, and it is coming soon to iOS and Android, with early access open now:

• The Mass of the day according to the 1962 Missal, its full proper from the Introit to the Communion, Latin beside English.
• The Divine Office of the Roman Breviary, all eight hours, Matins through Compline.
• The 1962 calendar: feasts, fasts, Ember Days, classes I to IV.
• The Rosary of fifteen mysteries, the litanies and the great devotions, with synchronised audio to pray along.
• The Bible: the Vulgate with the Douay-Rheims, book by book, offline.
• A Latin Mass finder for traditional Masses near you.

	Laudate	Iter Fidei
Rite	Reformed (post-1969)	Traditional 1962
Office	Liturgy of the Hours (1970)	Roman Breviary
Readings	Current lectionary (NAB)	Propers of the 1962 Missal
Catechism	Catechism of 1992	Trent and St Pius X
Price	Free	Free early access

If you want a free, broad Catholic reference app in the current rite, Laudate serves that purpose well and costs nothing. If it is the traditional Mass, the Breviary and the old calendar that you pray by, that is precisely what Iter Fidei carries.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Laudate Catholic app?

Laudate is a free Catholic app for iPhone and Android, developed since 2012 by Aycka Soft. It gathers the daily Mass readings, the Liturgy of the Hours in English and Latin, the New American Bible and the Douay-Rheims, the Rosary and many chaplets, the Stations of the Cross, the 1992 Catechism and a large library of prayers. It follows the reformed Roman rite.

Is the Laudate app free?

Yes. Laudate is free on the App Store and Google Play, with no subscription; its App Store listing shows no in-app purchases. The content itself is not locked behind a paywall.

Does Laudate have the Latin Mass?

Laudate has a section called "Latin Mass" and Latin versions of many prayers, but its daily readings and calendar follow the current, post-1969 Missal. It does not give the proper of each day according to the traditional 1962 Missal; for that you need a traditional hand missal, Divinum Officium on the web, or an app built for the 1962 rite such as Iter Fidei.

Does the Laudate app have the Liturgy of the Hours?

Yes, in English and in Latin. This is the Liturgy of the Hours, the reformed Office promulgated in 1970. It is not the traditional Roman Breviary of 1962, which has a different distribution of the psalms and keeps Prime and the full night Office of Matins.

Which Bible does the Laudate app use?

Laudate carries two Bibles: the New American Bible, which is the translation of the readings used in Mass in the United States, and the Douay-Rheims in Challoner's revision, which can be read offline. The Douay-Rheims, translated from the Latin Vulgate, is the traditional English Catholic Bible and the one we use on this site.

Is Laudate a good Catholic app?

For what it sets out to be, a free, broad reference app in the current rite, Laudate is solid and widely recommended, though its design is dated and its menus are crowded. A Catholic attached to the traditional liturgy will find that its calendar, Office and readings are not those of the 1962 books.

Is Laudate available for PC?

Laudate is published as a mobile app, for iPhone, iPad and Android. On a computer, the traditional Office and Mass of any day can be prayed through Divinum Officium, free on the web.

Iter Fidei carries the Mass of the 1962 Missal, the Divine Office of the Roman Breviary, the Rosary and the old calendar, in Latin and English, with audio, even offline. It is coming soon to iOS and Android, with free early access. Join early access here.

Sources. Missale Romanum and Breviarium Romanum, editiones typicae 1962; Pope St Pius V, Quo Primum (1570); Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566); Catechism of St Pius X; Holy Scripture (Douay-Rheims, Challoner revision), Psalm 116.