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Philly Based Companies Help Connect Catholics For World Youth Day

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - World Youth Day is a gathering that happens every three years in the Catholic church. This year it's in Krakow, Poland, starting Tuesday.

Two Philadelphia-based companies will help connect pilgrims digitally with a new app called Pilgrimage.

It was created as a joint effort between of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (organizers of the American celebration of World Youth Day 2016) and the American Bible Society, which is now based in Philadelphia.

"It's really an outlet for them to interact with the event," says Zach Hunter -- manager of product design and development, "and themes of World Youth Day from here on a daily basis from their phones and one of the ways we plan on doing that is though these amazing 360 degree videos. It's really the closest thing to being there"

They also collaborated with another Philly based company -- GreenFish Labs. They specialize in virtual reality and 360 degree video production.

"The future of VR, the future of any new technological medium or advancement isn't just going to be how cool or flashy it is or how fun it is to use," says Hunter. "The core of which or not this will be something that takes with main stream culture is whether or not we can use it to tell great stories and that's really what we're about as the Bible people I guess you could call us. We care about great story and we care about stories that change people's lives."

Pilgrimage is free and available for IOS and Android.

World Youth Day takes place July 26-31 with Pope Francis leading events like the closing overnight vigil and a mass that is expected to draw more than two million attendees from around the world.

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