A Philippine priest has created a video game that teaches the catechism entitled Paolo’s Journey.

Father Maximo Villanueva based the game on Pope Benedict’s Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. It was developed for him free of charge by leading animation studio Secret 6.

“Once I’d come up with the idea, I wrote to some animation studios about it,” the priest from Balanga diocese told guests at last week’s launch. “Ronald Schaffner, president of Secret 6 in California, emailed me and offered his services free.”

“I thought it was a joke. Other companies were quoting costs from US$25,000-50,000 to produce it.

“But Mr. Schaffner wrote again to explain that his wife is Filipina and Secret 6 has an office near Manila where they could develop it.”

Aimed at youths from 12 upwards, Paolo’s Journey is an adventure game, featuring a boy who gets lost in a forest and trapped in a cave.

The player has to answer questions on the sacraments, the 10 Commandments and Christian living in order to escape the cave and finish the game. The questions have varying levels of difficulty and can be viewed in English, Filipino, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan told the launch that the Bishops’ Conference would fund 10 CDs for each diocese, to be distributed among schools.

He added that while he was head of Balanga diocese, he sent Father Villanueva to study computer animation at the New York Film Academy and bring “technology for new evangelization” back to the Philippines. While there, he had internships at Pixar Studios and Nickelodeon.

The game was launched at the Catholic Bishops’ Conference headquarters in Manila on July 8.

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