Rome is all a flutter after his Holiness Pope Benedict IX has decided to allow the Roman Catholic Church to embrace aspects of the Apple Cargo Cult. The Vatican has created an application called iPriest, which can be found on the iTunes store for $5.

Father Damian Catso, who penned the app, said that it will help the Church enter the 21st century and enable it to reach out to generations of Apple fanboys. He admitted that the church has found it difficult to deal with the Apple mentality, which at times seems to be a rival religion. But it has decided that adopting the same approach used by Jesuit school teachers of “if you can't join them, beat them” was probably no longer the best policy.

“Steve Jobs has people queuing around the block to get into his Cathedrals, or iStores as they are known. We can only fill a Church when a child has been murdered,” Fr Catso pointed out.

The application allows Roman Catholics to confess their sins to the iPhone and get an appropriate penance at the push of a button. In the case of really hard sins, the phone will recommend flagellation or deliver several mild electrical shocks. The penance for being lazy is to refuse access to the iTunes store for an hour, and looking at a woman in lust will deny access to your Coldplay collection.

The application has several prayers for healing, and even a mild exorcism facility, although the application instructions suggests placing the phone in a special vomit proof case to prevent the signal being interrupted by the Devil.

“iPriest can do all the functions of a priest other than communion,” Fr Catso joked. “And the only reason we didn't write that one is because Steve Jobs did not design the iPhone so it could lift a cup above its head yet. Ah well, no one is perfect.”

Proceeds from the sales of the app will go towards helping priests avoid prosecution by moving them suddenly to other parts of the world before the police show up.