Monday, January 13, 2003		Feature

GIVE us this day our daily SMS. Believers in today’s frantic world can now find inspiration on the run thanks to that omnipresent companion — no, not a Guardian Angel but a cellular phone.

Italy’s largest mobile phone operator, TIM, has begun a service to offer clients SMS messages with "the prayer of the day", "saint of the day" or "gospel of the day".

The four beeps that signal an incoming inspiration are the latest opportunity given to Italian Catholics to help them on the technological stairway to Heaven.

But even prayer is not free these days. The service costs about 15 cents for each message — a new twist to the concept of pennies from heaven. Websites available to Italians include "Angels online," which will tell you everything you wanted to know about the 72 angels and archangels. It also includes a section explaining "The contract with your Guardian Angel." Then there is "Bible online" and "God Exists and he is online-Happy Web". If you were named after a saint and want to find out everything about his or her life, click on "Saints, Blesseds and Witnesses." Compared to other institutions, the Vatican was late to go online but made a big splash when it did in 1997. It’s Internet site is powered by three host computers named after angels — Raphael, Michael and Gabriel.

Raphael stores graphics and navigation paths, Michael protects the site from hackers and Gabriel interfaces between the other two computers and the outside world.