Users of the Daily Worship app will have access to Bible readings, prayers, canticles and services from The Book of Common Prayer. These will be available for each day of the year, covering five services: Morning and Evening Daily Prayer, A Late Evening Office, Compline, and Holy Communion.

The Most Rev Pat Storey, chair of the central communications board in the Church, said: “I am delighted to launch this new aid to our devotional life. It is a powerful thing for a community such as the Church of Ireland to be praying together, and using the same daily readings, through the vehicle of a smartphone application.

“This app aims to help us in our personal and communal prayer lives, and to bring us closer together as a church family, and to the God whom we worship.”

 Daily Worship can be purchased for €1.09/99p on Apple and Android devices from 10th May.

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It means priests will now be able to bless same-sex civil marriages or civil unions.

Same-sex marriages, however, are still not permitted to be conducted in churches.

The decision is likely to spark tension among Anglicans.

During a speech made at General Synod, Jay Behan, who is the Vicar of St Stephen’s Shirley, Christchurch, spoke against the motion, and said he couldn’t “live with it”.

“This issue has never been for conservatives, about bigotry, or about exclusion, or about hatred. It’s a difference of opinion over how you love,” he explained.

Anglican Taonga reported a speech from the other side of the debate, and said member Cruz Karauti-Fox, Manawa o te Wheke said: “I have many friends in the LGBT community. I myself am a part of the LGBT community.

“So for me, I am in fear. I am in fear that this Church will not push (this motion) through. I am in fear that I will go home and I will not be able to tell my friends, that I will not be able to tell my family, that my Church will accept civil unions.”

The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand and Polynesia’s governing body passed the motion in New Plymouth on Wednesday.

The Synod’s vote accepts the report and recommendations of the Church’s Motion 29 small working group.

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It calls for the couple to be blessed by God, and asks that “they may both live and grow in your love all their days”.

Harry and the American former actress will be married by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby in a religious service in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle on May 19.

Ms Markle has only recently been welcomed into the Anglican faith.

She was both baptised and confirmed in a secret ceremony conducted in March by the Archbishop, who described the proceedings as “beautiful” and “very special”.

The prayer reads:

God of love,

send your blessing upon Harry and Meghan,

and all who are joined in marriage,

that, rejoicing in your will

and continuing under your protection,

they may both live and grow in your love

all their days,

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

Vivian Adel Youssef, 18, from the village of Dafsh in Minya Governorate, married Hanna Emad on 19th April and moved to his village in Minya but has not been seen since she went to school.

Emad told the World Watch Monitor: “When I reached the school, I didn’t find her there. Her mobile phone was switched off.

“I searched for her everywhere – in her school, in the nearby streets, in the hospitals of Samalut – but I didn’t find her. I checked with her relatives and friends but none of them saw her that day.”

While he has reported his wife missing to the police, Emad has not received any information about her so far.

Youssef’s disappearance follows similar incidents that have left some family members fearing Christian women and girls are being abducted by Muslims with the aim of converting them to Islam to marry them.

Emad said that he did not believe his wife would run away from him.

He explained: “‘There wasn’t any dispute between us. I’m sure that Vivian was kidnapped.

“She is very religious and has a very strong relationship with God, and she loves me very much.”

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