Social Initiative Prison Ministry Program

2018 – Present

Catholic International’s digital prison ministry began with the launch of the first Continuing Education Catechetical course on the Edovo Technology Company’s digital platform: The Gospel of St. Matthew, a multi-lesson course.

At that time, Edovo was serving just under 50 prisons. The first report providing statistics on the number of students taking The Gospel of St. Matthew was generated on March 14th of 2018. 52 students had taken or were in the process of taking the course. Today, 6 years later, we have 90 multi-lesson courses published on the Edovo Company platform with 23 of those courses available in Spanish. We have gone from 52 students taking the first course to approximately 18,000 students a year each completing one or more multi-lesson courses. The 18,000 estimate is based on the Edovo report provided for the period: May 2023 – April 2024: 18,286. This is up 2,000 from the May 2022 – April 2023 report.

It is in collaboration with the Order of Malta that we have been able to build these courses. We have also been able to build the Gatekeepers Re-Entry program in both English and Spanish; Stations of the Cross in English and Spanish utilizing the Order of Malta Stations program; custom content during Covid, such as the Advent video prison program from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and the Order of Malta, Behind the Walls, Order of Malta Pen Pal Program, Digital Rosary, Quarterly Newsletters – Order of Malta; and other content as requested.

Catholic International University is also collaborating with Hallow Company to add their audio content to the Edovo prison platform; with outreach to other organizations such as SFS Ministries. As of August 12, 2024, Catholic International University content is Live in 782 state and county prisons with an additional 341 facilities in Pending Deployment status thru the Edovo platform and the tablet providers. This brings the total of prisons either live or soon to be live with Edovo content to 1,123 facilities.

Latest Engagement numbers: as of 08/12/2024
Lessons started: 2,400,073
Lessons completed: 2,093,919
87% successful rate for completed lessons