The Catholic prayer app Hallow became the No. 1 app on the App Store Charts on Ash Wednesday, which marks the start of 40 days of Lent, commemorating the 40 days Jesus Christ spent in the desert before he began his public ministry.
The prayer and meditation app shared in a post on X, “#1 in the App Store!! Glory Be – He is #1.” It also scored bragging rights as the first religious app to make it to the top.
“We are overjoyed with how powerful Day 1 of Lent Pray40 was,” the post read. “Not only did over 1 million people join the challenge and start a transformational prayer journey yesterday, Hallow also became the first religious app to ever reach the top of the App Store Charts!”
In the screenshot shared by Hallow, it showed the prayer app surpassed shopping app Temu followed by the social media app Threads. In a second post, the company noted while it has 85 employees “plus Jesus,” their victory beat out other companies like Temu with 10,000 employees and Threads with 67,000 workers.
#1 in the App Store!! Glory Be – He is #1
We are overjoyed with how powerful Day 1 of Lent Pray40 was. Not only did over 1 million people join the challenge and start a transformational prayer journey yesterday, Hallow also became the first religious app to ever reach the top of… pic.twitter.com/6c9wxSZ2mO
— Hallow (@HallowApp) February 15, 2024
“We’re blown away,” Alex Jones, CEO and co-founder of Hallow, said in a press release. “When we started Hallow, it would’ve been crazy for us to imagine a thousand people praying together on it, much less 1 million.”
“God is doing incredible things,” Jones added. “All glory and credit and praise belongs to him. Never in a million years would I have imagined we’d be at the top of the App Store. The other folks in the top 100 apps are just such incredible and popular apps with tens of thousands of employees — Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Google, Instagram. What a crazy world.”
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The app’s popularity to the top of the chart on Wednesday was aided by Catholic stars such as “The Chosen’s” Jonathan Roumie and Hollywood superstar Mark Wahlberg, who encouraged people to join them on the app in an ad that aired during Super Bowl LVIII.
The company said it saw the largest download it has ever had after that commercial aired calling on people to take a moment to “give thanks to God” and join in the prayer challenge during Lent.
Speaking to “Fox and Friends” on Wednesday, Wahlberg and Roumie talked about their partnership with Hallow.
“We just want to be able to do more, and I think, what better than to have Ash Wednesday fall on Valentine’s Day?” Wahlberg said. “Because where do you get more love than with the Lord and … in a time where there’s such a disconnect? We need things to bring people together and the power of prayer is doing that.”
Roumie added, “And I think as Mark’s saying … starting the day with gratitude and knowing that … we’ve been given so much in this life, to be grateful for to God.”