CNA Staff, Feb 9, 2024 / 07:00 am
The Catholic prayer app Hallow announced that its first-ever Super Bowl commercial will air during the big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, Feb. 11.
“Our goal at Hallow is to try to help as many people as possible, especially those who have most fallen away, to pray and build a real relationship with God,” Alex Jones, co-founder and CEO of Hallow, told CNA in an interview.
He shared that the 30-second commercial is “just a simple invitation to pray together.”
“Let’s all just take 30 seconds during the Super Bowl, during the Lord’s day, to give thanks to God together. That’s really all Hallow is about, just spending time with God, just letting Christ into our hearts. It’s an honor to be able to use the Super Bowl, for the first time ever, as an opportunity for us all to pray.”
The ad will feature Catholic actors Mark Wahlberg, who recently starred in “Father Stu,” and Jonathan Roumie, known for his role as Jesus in “The Chosen.” The teaser of the commercial shows both in a church — one blessing himself with holy water, the other receiving ashes on his forehead.
“Jonathan and Mark are two of our closest and longest-term partners. Both have done an incredible job reaching out to people and inviting them into prayer over the past couple years,” Jones said. “We’ve seen their work change thousands of people’s lives — people who have fallen away for years but see an invitation from Mark or Jonathan and are brought back into their faith for the first time.”
This year, the Super Bowl takes place three days before the beginning of Lent. Jones explained that when he and his team realized this, they were “thrilled.”
“When we found out the Super Bowl was going to fall on the Sunday immediately before Ash Wednesday, which only happens once every 10 years or so, we were thrilled at the idea of using it as an opportunity to invite people into prayer, especially those who are the hardest to reach, folks who might never otherwise have encountered prayer,” he said.
The commercial is set to air shortly before halftime and will air in 15 markets, FoxNews reported.
Jones hopes that the ad “reaches out to someone who maybe hasn’t prayed in a long time. That it might just allow someone somewhere an opportunity to let God into their hearts for the first time.”
He added: “If we can reach out to just one person like that — someone in a tough place, someone lost — and help them to begin a journey back to God, then yes, it will have been worth it.”
Here’s the teaser:
