How to send a Contact Us message

All the Universalis apps and programs now have a command called “Contact Us”. This is a good way of getting in touch with us, because it creates an email which automatically contains a lot of useful information – such as which version you are using, what calendar and language settings you have, and what page you are looking at.

Updating apps and programs

Depending what Universalis app or program you are using, it may update itself automatically when a new version comes out. Here are all the details, with instructions for manual updating.

High-contrast text in Android

If you find that the rubrics in a Universalis page, which are usually red, appear in either black or white with a fringe of the opposite colour round each letter, then this is because you have turned on the experimental “high contrast” mode in Android, which makes these changes to any text displayed by an app.

April 2024 newsletter

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Happy Easter! He is truly risen, alleluia.

If you look at the Lauds and Vespers pages this week, you will find that the psalms are the same every day. That is not a bug. The Church is drunk on the Resurrection and can’t stop celebrating it. Let’s let ourselves go, after the self-control of Lent, and do the same!

Reading and Reflection: New American Bible edition

We are pleased to announce the publication of the USA edition of “Reading and Reflection”, using readings from the New American Bible. (For the Jerusalem Bible edition for the rest of the world, see the announcement here.)

This book contains the readings at Mass according to the official lectionary of the Catholic Church, for every day of every year. Each and every reading is accompanied by an accessible and scholarly commentary by Dom Henry Wansbrough OSB.

The Easter Alleluia

Throughout Eastertide the Universalis apps on iPhone/iPad and Android have an “Alleluia button” which, if you press it, says Alleluia to you three times. These Alleluias come from you, the users of Universalis around the world. There are about 200 people’s voices in there. Each time you press the button, you will get different voices.

The button looks like this:

(Do not press the picture shown above, it is only a picture)

March 2024 newsletter

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We are just over half way through Lent, and Laetare Sunday has just celebrated the fact. The vestments at Mass were not a Lenten deep purple, but paler and whiter: the books call the colour “rose”. The opening antiphon at Mass didn’t tell us to repent or be sad: it said “be filled with joy”. Laetare Ierusalem, it said in Latin – which is how this Sunday got its name. Even the short reading at Lauds (from the prophet Nehemiah) hammered the point home:

This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not be mournful, do not weep. For this day is sacred to our Lord. Do not be sad: the joy of the Lord is your stronghold.

February 2024 newsletter

Welcome to Lent!!

The Gospel for Ash Wednesday neatly summarises the three pillars of Lent: fasting, prayer and almsgiving. When most people think of ‘giving things up for Lent’ they are thinking in terms of the disciplining of body and spirit, which comes under the broad category of ‘fasting’. So let’s leave fasting to one side and look at the other two: prayer and almsgiving.

December 2023 newsletter

After last year’s leisurely four-week Advent the hurried nature of this year’s Advent comes as a bit of a shock. Only three weeks and a day! A lot of activity has to be compressed into a small space, so please accept this short newsletter as our “Happy Advent” and “Happy Christmas” message combined.

Giving Universalis for Christmas

The easiest way to give Universalis is in the form of a Universalis registration code. A registration code really is a gift for life.

A Universalis registration code costs £19.99, which at today’s exchange rates is $24.54 or €23.30. It gives the recipient all the Mass readings for every day, forever, and all the Hours of the Liturgy of the Hours for every day, forever. There are also benefits such as the daily ‘About Today’ pages, with their stories of the saints and their illustrations. The registration code works on whatever devices your friend has – Android and iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch and Mac and Windows – and also for making personal e-books.

Problems on older Apple devices: corrected!

The versions of Universalis which have been in the App Store since last week have not been working on the following old Apple devices:

• iPad Air (1st edition)
• iPad Mini 2
• iPad Mini 3
• iPhone 5S
• iPhone 6
• iPod Touch (6th edition).

The affected version of iOS is version 12 (the latest release was 12.5.7). You can check your operating system version by opening the Settings app, selecting ‘General’ and then ‘About’.

This bug was Apple’s fault but we have found a way to avoid it. We created a new update which we sent to Apple and within an hour they had accepted it into the App Store. We are grateful for their promptness.

Catholic Calendar has the same problem: please wait 24 hours, and the update to that should be available as well.

How to get the corrected version

If you sit and do nothing, the App Store will probably update you to the latest, corrected version, but it could take a day or two.

To get the corrected version at once:

1. Open the App Store app.
2. Search for “Universalis”.
3. Tap on the heading of the entry for the Universalis app. A full-page description of the app will appear.
4. At the top of the description is the version number. This should be 3.115.
5. Press the button to download and install the new version.

November 2023 newsletter

November is traditionally the month of the dead, beginning as it does with All Saints and All Souls. Particular religious orders and particular regions often add to these: All Saints of Ireland, Deceased Clergy of Southern Arabia, Deceased Friends and Benefactors of the Order of Preachers, to give just three examples. November is the right month to assign to these commemorations because it comes at the end of the Church’s year when she contemplates the Last Things, the end of the world, and (at Advent) the Second Coming.

By the same token, November is the month of resurrection: of death as the moment of entry into eternal life. This can feel encouraging; or it can feel quite the opposite. If Judgement consists in God’s telling us, ‘Whatever you have become through your own actions, that is what you are’, then that makes immortality terrifying. We need all the help we can, from God especially, to become something that we can tolerate being: permanently, definitively, for ever.