Help & FAQ

Tell me from inside the app, and I'll get a report. Easy as pie:

1. Open that parish.
2. Scroll to “Is this information accurate?” at the bottom of the page.
3. Tap Report an issue, tick what is wrong — Mass times, confession, address, phone — and write what it should say.
4. Leave your email only if you want an answer. It is the one optional field, and nothing else about you is sent.

The report comes to me, not to the parish. I'll check it against that parish's current bulletin and correct the source data. That fix will reach everyone who uses the app — you don't have to update anything, and neither does anyone else.

Sure! contact@parishfinder.app. Name the parish and its city — there are often multiple parishes with the same name, which can be confusing for me.

Send me its name and city! It's possible I've missed it, but more often than not, it's in a diocese that this app doesn't support yet. More on that below.

Cool! Let me know. Send the new schedule, or a link to the bulletin that carries it, and I will put it in. If your bulletin publisher has changed recently, tell me that too.

Parish bulletins — the primary thing a parish publishes every week and keeps current. Each parish's Mass, confession and adoration times are read out of its own most recent bulletin, along with its contact info. I'll give you a link to the bulletin, so you can read it for yourself, too!

Not from a website footer edited in 2019, and not from a diocesan directory. When a bulletin and a website disagree, the bulletin wins.

• Bulletins are re-read weekly, so corrections and seasonal changes land about weekly.
• Your phone re-checks for new data automatically.
• If a phone has failed to reach the data for a week (say, if you're offline), you'll get a warning. Just like if you were to read from last months' bulletin, it might not be completely accurate at that point!

That card — “Do you know this parish?” — means exactly what it says: for some reason, I couldn't confirm that schedule, and it might be wrong.

If you attend there, let me know! Confirm or correct the times on that card takes about fifteen seconds and removes the doubt for everyone else.

When a bulletin indicates that a Mass is cancelled, the app keeps that row on the schedule and strikes it through, with the reason the bulletin gave. It should be back in a week or two!

This is something I'm still working on, and there could be issues here. Times move for Christmas, the Triduum and holy days of obligation, and a weekday Mass is sometimes given over to a funeral on two days' notice — which no bulletin printed in advance.

On those days, it never hurts to call the parish before you make the drive. Though I try for this app to be as accurate as possible, sometimes that's impossible, and a little verification goes a long way.

Presently, every parish of the Diocese of Cleveland — 180+ of them, across its eight counties: Ashland, Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Summit and Wayne. A parish with more than one church gets an entry for each site, so you are given the address of the building the Mass is actually in.

You are outside those eight counties. The app still works — search, parish pages and schedules are all there — but you're technically outside of the service area, so these parishes might be quite a ways from you.

This is based on the boundaries of the diocese. You might travel from one diocese to another routinely for Mass, which is fine! Some parishes in different dioceses might even be really close to each other. But technically, if you see this, the parishes closest to you, in your diocese, aren't included in this app.

I hope so! But, not right off the bat. There's a lot of legwork to get this setup, and I can't cover everything all at once.

If you want this app to support your diocese, let me know, but also tell your own parish priest and even your own diocesan offices! I'll leave it to the Spirit to help discern where this goes next.

No — however, if you decline, any of the location functions (“Nearest to me”, your location on the map, etc.) either won't work or won't be super accurate. The core functionality will be there, but not everything.

Instead, you can give it a ZIP code: “Use a ZIP code” on the home screen, “Enter a ZIP code instead” on the map. Type five digits and the app works out the centre of that ZIP from the parish list already on your phone — no lookup service is contacted and the ZIP is never sent to me. Distances are then measured from that centre, and the home screen shows Near ZIP 44114 so you are never in doubt about which it used. Tapping that line clears it.

When you do grant location, it is read on the phone and used on the phone. It is not transmitted, not stored, and not shared — see the privacy policy.

Yes, from the second launch onward. The first run downloads the parish directory and needs a connection to do so, but after that the whole directory lives on your phone. Schedules, search, parish pages and saved parishes all work with no signal whatever — in a church basement, in a hospital, on a plane. Now, it won't update if you stay offline, so I recommend using this online whenever possible.

Only three things still need the internet: the map's tiles, opening a parish's actual bulletin, and staying up to date.

Tap the star on its page. It joins My Parishes, the third tab, and it is then two taps from opening the app to reading this Sunday's times. Saved parishes stay on your phone.

Settings → Appearance → Theme. Three choices: follow the phone, always light, always dark. A new install starts light. Pick System and it turns with your phone, including on a schedule.

Today in the liturgical calendar — the season, its colour, and the saint or feast being kept. The app works the date out for itself, so it is right with no connection at all; when there is one, it fills in a few further details.

It is free, with no advertising, no account, no subscription and no analytics watching you use it. I pay for the domain and the small server that hands out the parish data.

I don't want to sell anything to you, nor do I want to sell your info to others! I built this to make it super easy to find what you're looking for at your local parish.

That said, though, if you wish to donate to help me continue developing and running this app, I'd be greatly appreciative. Send me an email if you wish to do that.

Android 7.0 or newer, and iPhone or iPad on iOS 15 or newer. It is designed for a phone and lays itself out properly on a tablet.

No. ParishFinder is my own project. It is not an official function or arm of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, and neither the diocese nor any parish is answerable for what it shows — that is on me. The times in it are compiled from bulletins the parishes publish openly.

Only what you deliberately send. If you never submit feedback, nothing about you ever reaches me: there is no account, no analytics, and your location is used on your phone and stays there.

A feedback submission carries what you wrote, which parish it was about, the app version, and your email if you chose to give one. You can have it deleted if you want — write to me with the parish and roughly when you sent it. The privacy policy sets all of this out in full.