ParishSOFT News & Information

Press Release

Parishes Online® Partners With Mass Times® To Provide New Online Resources For Catholics

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 11, 2008
Contact: ParishSOFT
Michael Cusick, Vice President of Sales and Marketing
Phone: 866.930.4774

Ann Arbor, MI—Parishes Online, a unit of ParishSOFT®, has partnered with Mass Times Trust to bring new resources online for Catholics, officials from both companies announced today.

More than four million traveling Catholics visit www.MassTimes.org each year, where they run 15 million searches to find Mass schedules, church addresses, interactive map locations for one or more churches, adoration, reconciliation times, and devotions. MassTimes.org now lists 115,000 churches in 201 countries and territories throughout the world.

Over 1.5 million Catholics use ParishesOnline.com, the online directory of all U.S. Catholic churches, including Mass times, pastor and staff names, and contact information. In addition, ParishesOnline.com provides popular, free web services for parishes, including online church calendar, facility scheduler, church bulletins, email accounts and more.

For the future, the new partnership allows Mass Times and Parishes Online to provide free web services for parishes outside of the U.S., extend mapping capabilities, search by time of Mass, and more. Diocesan and parish staff will be able to update their information in one location and have it shared across the two popular sites. The partnership will also offer software tools to make it simple for dioceses and parishes to keep their information up to date and make it available to their local communities.

According to ParishSOFT President and CEO William Pressprich, "We are delighted to partner with Mass Times to further our mission to serve the Church by offering relevant technology. Working together, we will deliver professional, high-performance web applications that are closely aligned to the needs of traveling Catholics, as well as diocesan and parish staffs. Looking toward the future, ParishSOFT we will be closely integrating the parish websites with our management software to personalize the information that is available for parishioners, religious education parents, ministry leaders and volunteers, and others in the church community."

About Mass Times Trust

With the help of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), Mass Times started collecting church information fifteen years ago from 176 dioceses, paper directories and even hand-written lists of churches. It took 18 months to acquire and load the directories into the first version of the database. Since then, Mass Times has grown to be the largest global provider of information for traveling Catholics.

Mass Times collaborates with the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB), has a close relationship and partnership with the Daughters of St. Paul, and receives encouragement from the Vatican through Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli.

MassTimes.org receives donations to support its mission and offers free vocation advertisements. Besides the help of dioceses and parishes, more than 100 volunteers and seminarians work diligently to keep church information current.

About Parishes Online and ParishSOFT

Begun in 1998, www.ParishesOnline.com has become a popular site for Catholics looking for information about parishes as well as parish staff desiring to communicate with parish of baptism for sacramental purposes. In addition, Parishes Online provides FREE web services for parishes, including website, online calendar, facility scheduler, email accounts, and more.

ParishSOFT offers a complete suite of church management software and web services that streamline operations, foster collaboration, and improve communications. ParishSOFT has 45 staff and continually invests in improving its software and web solutions, as well as adding new features and products. ParishSOFT presently serves 3,300 Catholic parishes and 35 arch/dioceses.

For More Information

Michael Cusick, Vice President of Marketing and Sales, ParishSOFT
Phone: (866) 930-4774 x131
Email: mcusick@parishsoft.com

Robert Hummel, Mass Times Trust Founder and Trustee
Phone: (617) 435-1989
Email: bhummel@aol.com

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