Gay rights groups are voicing their displeasure at a newly-released iPhone app that guides Catholics through confession and advertises itself as “the aid for every penitent.” The £1.19-priced app – “Confession: A Roman Catholic App” – is available from the Apple iTunes store. The app chiefly allows “a personalised examination of conscience for each user”; and the senior members of the Catholic church have already approved of it.

However, expressing their fury against the app for supposedly “promoting anti-gay spiritual abuse,” the gay rights groups have specifically drawn attention to a particular question – one of the several others – that the app asks: “Have I been guilty of any homosexual activity?”

Condemning the app as a reflection of the use of technology for targeting minorities, Wayne Besen - executive director of Truth Wins Out, a group that campaigns in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people – has accused the app of “helping to create neurotic individuals who are ashamed of who they are.”

Besen, who is of the opinion that such “cyber spiritual abuse” actually promotes “backward ideas in a modern package,” said: “Gay Catholics don't need to confess, they need to come out of the closet and challenge anti-gay dogma. The false idea that being gay is something to be ashamed of has destroyed too many lives. This iPhone app is facilitating and furthering the harm.”