With more than one billion monthly active users, it’s no small task to usurp TikTok — even for a day — but that’s exactly what happened on Ash Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Hallow, a Catholic prayer and meditation app, surpassed TikTok, Google, Netflix, Spotify, and Instagram, landing itself in the No. 3 spot in the Apple App Store.
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“God is doing something pretty incredible,” Hallow founder and CEO Alex Jones told The Daily Wire. “We never thought in a million years that we might have this many people from all around the world gathered together in prayer.”
Jones, a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, first launched Hallow in 2018 alongside Alessandro DiSanto and Erich Kerekes. Since its inception, the faith-based app has been downloaded millions of times and has reached some 150 countries. In 2022, users completed more than 100 million prayers.
During a recent interview on CBN’s “Quick Start,” Jonathan Roumie, who portrays Jesus in the hit Bible series “The Chosen,” credited God for providing him with “all these different opportunities,” including participating in the Hallow app.
Roumie, making his movie debut in “Jesus Revolution,” a film about the revival that swept through Southern California in the early 1970s, is one of the lead voices for Hallow’s Lent prayer challenge.
“[God] has brought me to these projects that put me in this position of prominence with this spiritual proclivity,” said the actor. “I have to look at that holistically and pull out to a bird’s eye view of all the things God seems to be orchestrating in my life and I cannot help but see the geometry of it and say, ‘OK, this is all connected.'”
Listen to our conversation with Roumie:
The 48-year-old Roumie said he hopes his work in “The Chosen,” “Jesus Revolution,” and through the Hallow app will serve as a spark to “activate” others’ relationships with God.
“We’re all on this big rock together, so I think our responsibility is to each other,” he said. “To God first, and then to each other. So hopefully these things that I’m involved with will help expedite the intensity of people’s connectedness to their creator.”
On Wednesday, the Hallow app kicked off its 40-day prayer challenge, running through Easter Sunday. In addition to Roumie, the app will feature prayers and meditations narrated by Mark Wahlberg, Jim Caveziel, Immaculée Ilibagiza, and Father Mike Schmitz.
Wahlberg, for his part, appeared on NBC’s “Today” this week to promote Hallow.
“I do not deny my faith,” the “Uncharted” actor said. “That’s an even bigger sin. You know, it’s not popular in my industry, but, you know, I cannot deny my faith. It’s important for me to share that with people.”
He went on to say his faith is “everything” to him, telling NBC host Savannah Guthrie, “God didn’t come to save the saints, He came to save the sinners.”
“We’ve all had things and issues in our lives and we want to be better versions of ourselves and, through focusing on my faith, it has allowed me to do that,” Wahlberg said.
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