Two updates on some important liturgical resources have recently been brought to my attention. The first is from Fr. Paolo Padrini, the creator of iBreviary, who informs us that the app is now available in three new languages, Portuguese, Arabic and Turkish. The latter two are especially important for those who live in countries where Bibles and Christian prayer books are illegal or under heavy restrictions. The app is free, and contains a truly remarkable number of resources for prayer, meditation and study, including the Liturgy of the Hours in both the Roman and Ambrosian Rites, the Roman Breviary of 1960 (in Latin only), the Roman and Ambrosian Missals, lives of the Saints, the Mass lectionary and much more. Full information is available at their website, http://www.ibreviary.org/en/, including a brief interview which Fr. Padrini gave to Shawn Tribe a while back. (Click here and scroll down a bit.) As a reminder, Shawn also posted a list of online resources for the Divine Office almost three years ago, to which you, our readership, made a number of useful additions in the combox.
Secondly, we noted back in February a new blog called “Alma Bracarense” about the Use of Braga. The editor has informed me that he is now posting in English, and will be translating his older posts from Portuguese. The blog has a number of really interesting posts with pictures from the Missal of Braga, as well as videos of a number of Braga Rite ceremonies. Braga is one of the few places in Europe that maintained its proper medieval Use after the Tridentine reform, and even into the 20th-century; the Use of Braga contains many of the classically medieval features of the liturgy, which will be familiar to those who use the Dominican, Premonstratensian or Old Carmelite liturgical books, or those who have studied the Uses of Sarum, Paris etc., but also many features unique to itself. (Click here for a video of the Good Friday Procession in the Cathedral of Braga from this year.)