The Vatican’s new smart device, the eRosary, is sparking privacy concerns as the gadget will record and store prayers and confession made to the object. It will then beam your deepest sins and darkest thoughts to the ‘cloud,’ and by that, we don’t mean Heaven.
What the Vatican – or intelligence agencies – will then do with that information is unknown.
The wearable eRosary is designed to be slung across the neck as any ordinary rosary, but it connects with a smartphone app that will guide the wearer through the idolatrous and vainly repetitious (Matthew 6:7) rosary prayer.
The device is “activated” by using a sensor that detects the sign of the cross, and as prayers are prayed, the device makes suggestions for prayer, confession, and guidance through the rosary incantation.
However, listening to the prayers is the smartphone app, which is linked to the rosary. Then, data retrieved the process is beamed back to the app designers, which essentially is a data firm with connections to the Vatican.
The Vatican News said, “When activated, the user has the possibility to choose either to pray the standard rosary, a contemplative Rosary and different kinds of thematic rosaries that will be updated every year.”
Some of those prayers are prayers of Confession, in which the individual’s darkest sins or thoughts are conveyed to the prayer device. That data is then stored in ‘the cloud’ but only retrievable by the app makers, and not the prayer-givers.
Designed for “millennials” to teach them how to use the rosary, the system essentially serves as a snitching device.
The Vatican News went on to write, “The project brings together the best of the Church’s spiritual tradition and the latest advances of the technological world.”
In the past, the Vatican has been guilty of extorting parishioners who have confessed their sins through the traditional confessional booth. As detailed in the history book The Dark Box, the confession process is one of scandal and weaponized confessions. In an age of data and surveillance, the ramifications could be so much worse today than it was centuries ago.
The confessional snitching device is being sold at an Italian website for 99 Euros, or about $110 USD.
