Smartphone app tracks papal drama

Conclave Catholic news app
Free for iOS devices at Apple App Store and Android devices at Google Play

Leaders of the Catholic Church are assembled in Rome to pick a new pope, in the first papal conclave of the smartphone era. You know what that means--someone’s cobbled together a new app to let us track the proceedings from start to finish.

Conclave was created by Logos Bible Software, a major vendor of digital products for religious folk. The app has a clean and efficient interface that links users to the latest news about the papal selection conclave. There’s a link to videos from Rome and pointers to the best Catholic news sites. You also get a Twitter feed that singles out tweets relating to the selection process--even tweets that make fun of the whole thing.

Speaking of fun, there’s a section with mini-biographies of the cardinals, and a numerical “buzz” ranking that attempts to estimate the popularity and influence of each man. The Catholic website NewAdvent.org calculates the score by using Google Trends to measure how many people search for a particular cardinal by name. They admit that this won’t predict the outcome of the conclave, but it lends an enjoyable “hot or not” flavor to the proceedings.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re Catholic, non-Catholic or ex-Catholic, everybody cares about about the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, and the choice of his successor. Conclave is a fine one-stop location for the latest on who’ll get to be the greatest.