If you've ever wished you could ask a question about Catholic teaching and get an answer grounded in actual Church documents — not internet opinions — Magisterium AI was built for exactly that.^1 Created by Longbeard, a company founded in 2015 in Rome by Matthew Harvey Sanders (a former Canadian infantry officer and seminarian), this Catholic AI answer engine draws exclusively from a curated library that now lists 42,302 documents, including Magisterial documents, the Church Fathers and Doctors like Aquinas and Augustine, Canon Law, and Sacred Scripture.^2
Every response comes with verifiable citations linking directly to the source text, so you never have to take the AI's word for it — you can check the original document yourself.^3 The app is used in over 190 countries and supports 75+ languages, serving Catholics and seekers for everything from homily prep and catechism lessons to personal questions about faith and morals.^2
Beyond the chat experience, Magisterium AI offers "Holy Widgets" — guided prayers like the Rosary, Stations of the Cross, confession guides, daily Mass readings, and the Saint of the Day.^4 A Biblical Commentary tool surfaces trusted Catholic commentary on any Scripture passage, and My Library lets you search the source texts, save books for later, listen to them, and build collections around an author, topic, or project.^2 Explore shows the library as a three-dimensional map, so you can find areas of concentration and discover related sources.^2 Learn Mode provides guided learning paths with quizzes and flashcards, Canvas Mode helps users draft prayers, reflections, or letters infused with Catholic wisdom, and Thinking Mode delivers deeper, more robust answers to complex questions.^2 A Spiritual Statistics feature serves up current and historical data on nearly every diocese and country in the world.^4 Newer additions include searchable Diocesan Financial Records, a Catholic Leaderboard ranking dioceses and countries by the statistics the Church itself reports, News & Insights, and Upload Documents for commentary on your own homilies, essays, or reflections.^2 Voice Mode and read-aloud are available on Pro plans.^2
Why Christians Love It"It's so easy to use and saves so much time when I have a question about the faith. My wife is not Catholic and frequently has questions... now I can do it in seconds and have all the references right there. It has changed my life!"^6
"My first two questions were the two subjects this life-long senior Catholic could never get his head around: intercession of the saints and what appears to be Mary worship. Both answers were thoughtful, nuanced and insightful. They changed my thinking."^6
Notable- Partnered with Hallow, the #1 Catholic prayer app, to provide AI-powered answers within the Hallow experience^7
- Collaborates with Pontifical Universities in Rome to digitize rare manuscripts and historical documents through the "Alexandria Digitization Hub"^1
- Also available via WhatsApp, and offers an API & MCP for developers building on Catholic content^2
- Part of a broader Longbeard product family that includes Vulgate AI (an AI library platform for digitization and discovery) and Ephrem, a specialized Catholic language model^8
- Development is exceptionally active — the iOS app shipped version 1.4.2 on October 27, 2026, and the Android app was updated on October 23, 2026^9
- CEO Matthew Harvey Sanders has a researcher on staff who is a Catholic priest from the Archdiocese of Malta, and the team includes a Director of Content with Vatican media experience^10
- Launched Catholic Intelligence (C-Intelligence) for Dioceses — anonymized, aggregated dashboards of what the faithful are actually asking (trending topics, conversation sentiment, active users by parish), paired with diocesan manuscript digitization through Vulgate AI, with free partnerships for dioceses under $5M in average annual revenue^11
- Organization plans cover groups of five or more users, with centralized license and admin management and GDPR/CCPA compliance, and a Large Organization tier serves groups of more than 100 seats; see the pricing page for the current terms^12
