My Parish Pal

Privacy Policy — My Parish Pal

Last updated: October 15, 2026

My Parish Pal (“the app”) is operated by Sapientia Technologies Inc., an Ontario corporation (Ontario corporation no. 1001697737) (“Sapientia”, “we”, “us”). The app helps parishioners and parish staff stay connected: Mass times, sacraments, scheduling, bulletins and messaging. This policy applies to the My Parish Pal website (myparishpal.com) and to our mobile apps, including Find a Parish. We collect only what we need to provide these services, and we handle it with care.

Two roles. (1) Your parish’s records. Your parish is a separate organization and is responsible for the records it keeps about its community, such as membership, sacramental and ministry records. For these records Sapientia is your parish’s service provider: we process them only to run My Parish Pal for the parish and on its instructions. (2) Our own records. Sapientia is responsible for the information we need to run and secure the platform (for example sign-in and security logs), for demo requests, and for our own business records. This policy covers both.

1. Who is accountable

Sapientia’s Privacy Officer is accountable for our privacy practices and handles privacy questions, requests and complaints. You can reach the Privacy Officer, Sapientia Technologies Inc., at privacy@myparishpal.com.

2. Information we collect

  • Account information: your name, email address, optional phone number, account type (parishioner, parent/guardian or volunteer) and your chosen parish.
  • Parish activity: sacrament and rite requests, event registrations, ministry schedules and substitution requests, reconciliation bookings, and messages you send to the parish office.
  • Device, preference and security data: your language, theme and notification preferences; sign-in and security logs.
  • Cookies and similar technologies: we use only essential first-party cookies, which keep you signed in, secure two-step sign-in, and remember your language. Your device also stores your selected parish, theme and language locally. We do not use analytics cookies, advertising cookies or any third-party cookies, and we do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites.
  • Demo requests: if you use the public “Book a demo” form, we keep the name, parish, city, role, email and optional notes you send so we can follow up. For abuse prevention we also store a hashed (not raw) network address and a shortened browser identifier.

3. Sensitive information and your consent

Why consent is required. My Parish Pal is an app for Catholic parishes. Simply having an account, choosing a parish, and taking part in parish life through the app (for example sacrament requests, ministry schedules, event registrations and messages to the parish office) necessarily reveals your religious affiliation. Some records also concern children. We treat all of this as sensitive information and protect it accordingly.

Because we cannot provide the service without handling this information, your express consent is a condition of using My Parish Pal. When you create an account, you are asked to tick an unticked box confirming: “I understand that using My Parish Pal reveals my religious affiliation to Sapientia and to my parish, and I agree to the collection and use of my parish information to provide the service, as described in the Privacy Policy.” You cannot use the app’s parish features without giving this consent.

What this required consent covers, and what it does not. This consent covers only what is needed to provide the service you ask for: running your account, letting your own parish see and respond to your information, keeping the service secure, providing support, and meeting our legal obligations, all as described in sections 4, 6 and 10. It does not cover any other use. We never use information that reveals your religious affiliation to target or personalize advertising, to market to you, or for any other purpose that is not needed to provide the service, and we never sell it or share it with advertisers.

Optional choices are separate. Anything that is not needed to provide the service is optional, asked for separately, and never a condition of using My Parish Pal. For example:

  • Optional emails, such as news and updates that are not about your account or activity. You can turn these off at any time in your communication preferences or with the unsubscribe link in each message.
  • Optional notifications that you choose in your preferences.
  • The staff AI assistant described in section 4. It is used only by parish staff whose pastor has turned it on, and it is not required to use My Parish Pal.

Saying no to an optional choice, or changing your mind later, does not affect your access to the rest of the service.

If you do not give, or you withdraw, the required consent. You can withdraw your consent at any time, in the app or by emailing privacy@myparishpal.com, subject to legal or contractual restrictions. When you withdraw it, we stop using your parish information to provide the service, and you will no longer be able to use the app’s parish features, such as viewing or managing your parish activity, schedules, requests and messages. Your account will then be limited to the following, so that you can still manage your information and wind down your use:

  • if you have made gifts through the app, cancelling any recurring gift and obtaining your receipts;
  • changing your communication preferences;
  • exporting a copy of your information; and
  • closing your account (see section 10).

Withdrawing consent with us does not delete records that belong to your parish, such as its sacramental registers, which your parish keeps under its own policies, or information we must keep by law (see section 10). You can give your consent again at any time to restore full use of the app.

4. How we use your information

  • To provide and personalize the parish services you request.
  • To let parish staff respond to your requests and pastoral needs.
  • To send notifications you have chosen and messages about your account and activity.
  • To keep the service secure and prevent fraud and abuse (for example rate limits on sign-in and public forms).
  • To provide support.
  • To produce aggregated or de-identified statistics that cannot reasonably identify you or your parish, which we use only to operate and improve the service. These statistics are never shared with any parish.

Staff AI assistant. Parish staff whose pastor has given them access can use an optional AI assistant in the staff console. When a staff member asks it a question, the question is sent to our AI provider, Anthropic, together with the staff member’s name and role, the parish name, the console screen in use and summary counts for the day (for example the number of appointments). Anthropic provides this service to us under its commercial terms, which do not allow it to train its models on the information we send. Anthropic’s standard practice is to delete this information within 30 days, although it may keep it longer where needed to enforce its usage policy or to comply with the law. Parishioners do not use the assistant.

Advertising. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it to target or personalize advertising. If we show advertising, it is contextual only: it is based on the page being viewed, never on your religious information or other personal information, and it is clearly labelled “Sponsored”. We never show advertising in any payment or donation flow, or to minors.

5. Protecting minors

The parish serves families and young people. Minors do not create or use login accounts. When a child takes part in a ministry, authorized parish staff create a limited roster profile, managed through a parent or guardian account in the same parish. The profile has no child email address, password or session. Schedules, availability and notifications go through the parent or guardian account, in line with the parish’s youth-safeguarding policy. Sacrament candidate records are also managed by staff and do not give a child a login. Your parish obtains any parent or guardian consent required. We collect only what these ministries need, and we never contact minors directly.

6. Who can see your information

  • Your parish. Authorized staff of your own parish, according to their role.
  • Not other parishes. Each parish can see only its own community’s information and its own account and billing records. No parish can see another parish’s information, Sapientia’s revenue, fees charged across parishes, or any other platform-wide financial information.
  • Sapientia’s platform administrator. One person administers the platform. That person accesses parish information only to give support, keep the service secure, or maintain it, and the access is logged.
  • Service providers who help us run the app, under written contracts that require them to protect your information and use it only to provide their services to us:
    • Vercel — application hosting;
    • Neon — database;
    • Stripe — payment processing for parish subscriptions;
    • Resend — email delivery;
    • Anthropic — the optional staff AI assistant.
  • When the law requires it. For example, to comply with a court order or warrant. Where a request concerns your parish’s records, we tell the parish first unless the law prevents us.

7. Where your information is stored

Your information is stored and processed in the United States, and possibly in other countries, by the service providers listed in section 6. While it is outside Canada, it is subject to the laws of the country where it is held and may be accessible to that country’s courts, law-enforcement and national-security authorities.

8. How we protect your information

We use safeguards suited to sensitive information. These include: encryption in transit and at rest; role-based access within each parish; strict separation between parishes; multi-factor authentication and logged access for the platform administrator; encryption of sensitive sign-in secrets; managed backups; and a documented incident-response process.

9. If there is a breach

If a breach of our security safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm to you, it will be reported to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and you will be notified as soon as feasible. For your parish’s records, we notify your parish so it can report and notify you. We keep a record of every breach for at least 24 months.

10. How long we keep information, and how to delete it

Deleting your account. You can permanently delete your account at any time from Account → Delete account in the app, or by following the steps at myparishpal.com/delete-account. You can also ask for deletion by emailing privacy@myparishpal.com or by contacting your parish office. Deletion removes your profile, schedule, requests and messages.

Retention periods.

  • Account information is kept while your account is active. When an account is closed, we delete the associated personal information within 60 days, except as described below.
  • Consent records. When you close your account, we keep a minimal record of when you gave or withdrew consent (an account identifier, the date, the policy version, the language and where it was given) for three years after closure, so we can show we obtained and honoured your consent. We then delete it. This record contains no name, parish activity or other religious information.
  • Backups are overwritten on a rolling basis within 35 days.
  • Sacramental registers are your parish’s records and are kept under the parish’s own policies.
  • Demo requests are kept for 12 months. The hashed network address and shortened browser identifier from a demo request are deleted after 30 days.

11. Your rights and choices

You can ask to access or correct your personal information, ask for a copy in a common electronic format, or ask us to delete it. You can also withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual limits. Section 3 explains what withdrawing the consent required to use My Parish Pal means, and how to change your optional choices. Most of this can be done directly in the app. For your parish’s records, contact your parish office; for anything else, email privacy@myparishpal.com. We respond within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca).

12. Quebec residents

My Parish Pal is not currently offered to parishes in Quebec. If you live in Quebec and have a question about your personal information, you can contact our Privacy Officer at privacy@myparishpal.com.

13. Changes to this policy

When we make a material change, we update the date above and tell you in the app and by email before the change takes effect. Previous versions are available on request.

14. Contact

For privacy questions about your parish’s records, contact your parish office through the app’s messaging feature or the contact details on your parish’s page. For privacy questions about the platform, contact the Privacy Officer, Sapientia Technologies Inc., at privacy@myparishpal.com. See also our Terms of Service.