The Vatican’s $129 ‘Smart’ Rosary Is a Fitness Tracker for Your Soul

It tracks prayers like other wearables track steps. It also tracks steps.

My mother often prays the rosary, and it’s something she does more regularly since she retired. But while I have collected rosaries over the years, I use them as wall decor or for fashion purposes, never as a tool for prayer. I don’t know anyone my age who uses a rosary to pray, and I think of the tradition as reserved for elderly Catholics.

So I was surprised when I spotted an announcement that the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, Pope Francis’ prayer initiative, introduced a €100 “eRosary.” The bracelet rosary pairs with a smartphone app to guide users through each step in the series of prayers. Users shake their bracelet twice to move on to the next prayer, and the text of each prayer displays on the app, which also includes a dashboard that tracks how many rosaries one has prayed, and an option to set prayer reminders for specific times. Like other smart wearables, the rosary bracelet keeps track of your steps, location, and calories burned, ostensibly to give you an extra incentive to wear it.

While on its face, a “smart” version of the centuries-old rosary, complete with fitness tracker, may seem ridiculous, and the device’s instructions to activate it…