The foundation “The Company of Mary, Mother of Priests”, has put online for free a new application for cell phones that seeks to help priests in their spiritual life.
The app is called “Cor Ardens” and, as explained by the founder of The Company of Mary, Mother of Priests, Fr. Gustavo Eugenio Elizondo Alanís, the name – which means “Fiery Heart” – is inspired by the Gospel passage of the Disciples of Emmaus, when two disciples of Jesus encountered the risen Lord and initially did not recognize him.
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When, after breaking the bread, the disciples realized that it was Jesus, the Gospel says, they asked themselves: “Didn’t our hearts burn while he spoke to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?”
“This is what this application aims to do,” Father Elizondo Alanís told ACI Prensa: “to set the heart on fire.”
The Company of Mary, Mother of Priests was founded in 2016 by Father Elizondo Alanís together with María Beatriz Arce de Blanco in Mexico City, after the visit that Pope Francis made to the country that year. The objective is to pray for priests and promote works of mercy especially for priests.
It is currently a private association of faithful established in the Archdiocese of Toluca.
In almost a decade, Father Elizondo Alanís shares, although they do not keep an exact count of the people linked to the foundation, he estimates that “there may be close to 1,600 people from 27 countries who are already united in prayer to ask for priests,” and that “they receive everything that we send in terms of prayers, reflections, intentions, exams, and so on.”
Those who join, he said, are known as “spiritual mothers,” in the case of women, and “custodians,” in the case of men, of priests. These people “commit to offering their lives through their ordinary work, their ordinary life (…) for priests. And that is a way of living this vocation that also includes striving to live and promote the fourteen works of mercy in favor of priests.”
In addition, he highlighted, at this time the foundation “La Morada de la Misericordia” emerged, through which collaboration with “food, housing, clothing”, as well as medicines and other “ways of helping a priest is made concrete with the idea that the priest can dedicate more of his time, his life, to his ministry and not dedicate time to other things where he can be helped.”
An app for “the spiritual formation of priests”
With the help of people who offered to help in its development, the creation of the mobile application was launched.
Father Elizondo Alanís explained that “we take into account that the bishops already have a permanent formation plan for their presbytery,” and with that in mind the application seeks “to be a collaboration in relation to the spiritual formation of priests, offering resources to pray with the Holy Gospel.”
The application has a section for the “Life Plan of Piety”, as well as missals, material for spiritual formation and magisterial documents.
The Mexican priest highlighted that, through different contacts, they have managed to make both Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV aware of their work in the foundation and, in particular, the development of this application.
“Cor Ardens” is available for download on iOS (Apple devices) a la App Storeand for Android devices in the Play Store.
David Ramos
Graduated in Communication Sciences from the Universidad Privada del Norte in Trujillo, Peru. With more than 12 years of experience in Catholic journalism working at ACI Prensa, I have been based in Mexico since 2018. I have covered Pope Francis’ trips to Ecuador, Paraguay, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Panama.