Top Catholic app reportedly removed from app store in China

This photo taken on Jan. 15, 2024, shows a Chinese flag fluttering below a cross on a Christian church in Pingtan in China’s southeast Fujian province. / Credit: GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images

CNA Staff, Jul 16, 2024 / 14:50 pm (CNA).

The popular U.S.-based Catholic app Hallow has been removed from the Apple App Store in China for featuring “illegal” content, the app’s founder said Monday. 

Alex Jones, Hallow’s founder, posted on social media Monday afternoon that the app “just got kicked out of the App Store in China.”

“Praying for all the Christians in China,” he added.

Hallow is a prayer app that provides audio-based Catholic devotional content. Since launching in 2018, Hallow says its app has been downloaded over 14 million times “across 150-plus countries.” In February, downloads of Hallow briefly topped the app store, across all categories, for the first time.

Jones told CNA in an email Tuesday that the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) informed him Hallow was “deemed to include content on the app that is illegal in China and so must be removed,” with no further details provided.

He said the number of users of the Catholic app in China was “well into the thousands,” though they don’t have exact numbers. China’s Catholics, according to one study, peaked at 12 million in 2005.

“We will continue to try and serve our brothers and sisters in Christ in China as best we can through our website, web application, social media content, but mostly with our prayers,” Jones said.

He declined to speculate on the timing of the CAC’s action. A major new audio series about the life of St. John Paul II, “Witness to Hope,” launched on Hallow this week and makes mention of the saint’s resistance to communism.

The communist government of China is officially atheist, though a handful of “official” religions are tolerated, including Catholicism. The Church in China is split between the government-sanctioned Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association and an “underground” Catholic Church that is persecuted and loyal to Rome.

The Vatican in 2018 signed on to a controversial deal with the Chinese government on the appointment of bishops, which China has repeatedly defied by appointing its own loyalists to episcopal positions.

The Chinese government has long exerted heavy control and surveillance over the internet and social media in the country and also pressures religious believers to conform to the ideology of the Communist Party. Among other things, Chinese law requires that religious education and sites of worship must be officially approved by and registered with the government.

This is not the first time that the CAC has used Chinese cyber law to pressure the removal of religious apps. In 2021, a digital Bible company removed its app from Apple’s app store offerings in China while Apple itself removed a Quran app from its China store, at the request of Chinese officials.

The CAC’s censorship is also not limited to religious apps: In April, the CAC ordered Apple to remove WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram — three of the world’s most popular messaging apps, all of which offer private, encrypted messaging — from the app store, citing national security concerns.