Welcome to Universalis

The Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) is the richest single prayer resource of the Christian Church. It provides prayers, psalms and meditation for every hour of every day. It has existed from the earliest times, to fulfil the Lord's command to pray without ceasing.

“The purpose of the Divine Office is to sanctify the day and all human activity.”

“The Office is... the prayer not only of the clergy but of the whole People of God.”

Apostolic Constitution, Canticum Laudis.

The Universalis web site gives you quick and simple access to this resource, and to the liturgical calendar, and also to each day's readings at Mass.

Free web pages

The free Web pages give you Universalis content for today, yesterday, and the week ahead.

For today's Universalis pages, see the links on the left.

Your current settings

Calendar: United States

Today is: Sat

If you need to change these settings, click on them.

The Jerusalem Bible translation is used for all the scripture readings. The translation of the Psalms is our own. For other translations, see the paid-for service.

Other free services

WAP pages

WAP is a lightweight Web for mobile devices with small screens - in particular, mobile phones such as the Blackberry. The Universalis WAP site gives a shortened version of the main site to fit in the smaller space.

RSS feeds

Selected parts of the Universalis site are available as RSS feeds, for you to view in a feed reader or incorporate into a web site.

Banners

You can incorporate the Universalis banner into your web site as a way of informing your visitors and giving them quick access to Universalis.

Catholic Calendar

The free Catholic Calendar application for the iPhone is available directly from Apple in the iPhone App Store. It gives you a complete liturgical calendar for every day of every year, with lives of the relevant saints and essays on various feasts.

For Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac, and Palm OS, you can get a free Catholic Calendar by installing one of the Universalis downloads and never buying a registration code for it.

Paid for

By agreement with the copyright holders, the paid-for services of Universalis have more translations.

The Mass readings include the Responsorial Psalm for the English-speaking world. They are available in the New American Bible translation for America and in the Jerusalem Bible translation with the Grail psalms for the rest of the world.

In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Grail psalms (as used liturgically in most of the English-speaking world) are included in addition to our own translation. The Jerusalem Bible translation is used for all the scripture readings in the Liturgy of the Hours.

Buying a single registration code will give you access to all the services listed in this section, except for the Universalis application for the iPhone.

Universalis downloads

You can download a complete Universalis program from our web site. This contains the whole of the Universalis content, without time limits, and it gives you the benefit of all the additional translations. The downloads are available for Windows, Windows Mobile, Mac, and Palm OS.

These downloads work as a free trial version for a month before you have to decide if you want to buy a registration code to activate them permanently. For dates outside the trial period, the program will work as a simple Catholic Calendar, just like the free iPhone application.

Entering a registration code adds no new features: it simply removes the date restriction of the free trial version.

Universalis app for iPhone

This is available directly from Apple in the iPhone App Store. It contains the whole of the Universalis content, without time limits, and it gives you the benefit of all the additional translations. It has to be separate from the other Universalis downloads because of Apple's rules for the App Store, and there is no trial period for the same reason.

Buying the iPhone app lets you unlock and use all the other paid-for Universalis downloads and services.

Automatic daily emails

You can tell our web site to email you some or all of each day's pages to you, daily. To do this, you need either a Universalis registration code or the Universalis application for the iPhone.

Create your own e-book

You can put a day's, a week's, or a month's Universalis content into an e-book, to read on your Amazon Kindle, Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble Nook, etc. The e-books you create are for your own personal use only.

To create e-books, you need to install the Universalis download for Windows or the Mac.

Other devices

If you have a device that runs a different operating system, such as Android, Blackberry, or Symbian, then you can't use any of our downloaded programs directly. You could try setting up the daily email service, or you could try creating your own e-book to read on your device.