Catholic International University honored Alex Jones, founder of the popular prayer app Hallow, with the university’s Founder’s Award at its 42nd annual gala Nov. 21.
Before the gala, the university held an academic convocation Mass for graduates at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington. The Mass was celebrated by Bishop Michael F. Burbidge and Bishop Mark Brennan of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston, W.Va.
While many academic institutions promote relativism and secularism, CIU promotes the Catholic faith without compromise, Bishop Brennan said in his homily. “Tonight, we congratulate the men and women who have graduated from their courses of study and earned their degrees. They are the living stones in the great temple of the church, and individually, temples of the Holy Spirit,” he said.
The celebration continued at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, where graduates mingled with university officials, board members and donors.
“At Catholic International University, our mission is to communicate the heart and mind of the church through online education,” said Maria Sophia Aguirre, university president. “Embracing technology is nothing new for us. It’s part of our history. We are pioneers in this field.”
Catholic International University — formerly Catholic Distance University, and originally the Catholic Home Study Institute — was founded by Arlington Bishop Thomas J. Welsh in 1983. The program evolved from correspondence courses via mail to offering online courses in 2000. Today, it is exclusively an online university, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees.
At the CIU gala, Bishop Burbidge joined Aguirre and CIU trustee Stephen Pryor in presenting the university’s Founder’s Award to Jones. He launched Hallow in 2018, and since then it has been downloaded nearly 30 million times.
“It is such an incredible honor to be here,” Jones said. He emphasized the importance of CIU’s mission, including offering educational programs to incarcerated men and women. “The really beautiful part is how we bring such beauty … into the places that are hardest to reach,” he said.
Jones said the app’s inspiration came from a transformational reversion he had in college after years away from the faith. He said that during his reversion, he fell in love with silent prayer and Lectio Divina, a meditational form of prayer with the Bible. Jones then quit his job to pursue a startup, making a Catholic meditation app.
“No faith-based app, meditation app, workout app, or reference app or Bible app, or any sort of app has ever cracked the Top 10 in the app store,” Jones said. “We’ve been in the top three each of the last three years.”
He shared several testimonials about the app’s impact, stating that God has used the app to help many people in great distress. He shared one story from a 15-year-old user, who said that she was preparing to die by suicide and had even written her dad a note, when she received a push notification from Hallow, reminding her to pray. “She said, ‘God, I don’t believe in you, but this is your last chance: Prove it to me that you’re real.’ And he did,” Jones said. “We have this tremendous privilege of getting to hear what the Lord is doing in people’s lives.”
Jones thanked CIU members for their work in supporting the app, and more importantly, the church: “You guys are doing that incredible work, teaching and training and building up in the world … using the tools that God has given us to reach out and make it accessible to folks in ways that it couldn’t be before.”
