Eve was tempted by the apple. Now the smartphone invented by the company that bears its name has a confession app claimed to be the first of its kind to be approved by the Catholic Church.

Confession: A Roman Catholic App for iPhones and iPads is touted as the ''perfect aid for every penitent'' and is designed to be taken into the confessional.

It creates a customised and password-protected ''examination of conscience'' based on a person's age, sex, vocation and the time elapsed - in days, weeks, months or years - since the last confession. It also has seven acts of contrition to choose from, all for US$1.99.

Patrick Leinen, of the three-man team Little iApps, a US company ''with a Roman Catholic twist'', said his team had wanted to engage Catholics with new media in response to the Pope's World Communications Address last year, in which he spoke of its potential benefits.

''Our bishop was very excited about it,'' Mr Leinen said. ''We were able to work with several priests in order to get that examination of conscience created, so it was kind of fun.''

Bishop Kevin Rhoades went as far as to grant it an imprimatur - official endorsement from a church authority. ''The imprimatur itself was pretty neat,'' Mr Leinan said.

''When we were actually testing out the software before release we had one gentleman who hadn't been to confession in about 20 years. He went in and did his confession with it and he said it made it much easier on him.''

His was considering a conversion of the app for Google's Android smartphone.