Grow together
in faith and love

Avila is an app designed to help Catholic couples date well. Not every couple has strong role models for what intentional, faith-filled dating looks like — and many couples drift through their relationship without ever stopping to ask the deeper questions. Avila is a gentle guide that helps you and your partner come to know yourselves and each other more honestly, grow together in virtue, and prepare thoughtfully for the lifelong vocation of marriage.

The app is named after St. Teresa of Ávila, the 16th-century Carmelite mystic and Doctor of the Church, whose masterwork Interior Castle describes the soul's journey inward toward God through seven mansions. Her framework maps beautifully onto a couple's journey together: the earliest mansions mirror the wonder and honesty of first getting to know one another; the middle mansions reflect a couple's growth, their response to hardship, and their growing vulnerability with each other; and the final mansions parallel the ultimate self-gift, unity, and readiness for the vocation of marriage. Inspired by St. Teresa's theology, Avila is not just about finding someone — it's about journeying inward together toward God.

Avila is for Catholic couples who are in a committed, exclusive relationship and working toward — or actively discerning — marriage. Whether you are in the early stages of courtship or approaching engagement, the app meets you where you are. It is especially valuable for couples who want to be intentional rather than accidental in their approach to dating, and for those who may not have had strong role models for what a healthy, faith-centred relationship looks like.

At present, Avila is designed specifically for couples who are in a committed, exclusive relationship and actively discerning marriage. Casual dating and married life are both beautiful stages, but they call for different kinds of accompaniment than what Avila currently offers. We hope to serve more stages of the relationship journey in the future.

Avila is $3.99 per month per partner, or $39.99 per year per partner — about the price of a cup of coffee per month, and a couple of months free if you choose the annual plan. Each member of the couple subscribes individually; the relationship works best when both partners are equally invested, and each subscription unlocks Avila for that person.

Every new subscriber starts with a 14-day free trial, so you can explore the roadmap, take an inventory together, and try a few conversation starters before paying. You won't be charged until the trial ends, and you can cancel anytime through your App Store or Google Play account.

While Avila is designed for Catholic couples and its guidance is firmly rooted in Catholic teaching, any couple of Christian faith will find much here that resonates. The emphasis on virtue, honest self-knowledge, prayerful discernment, and authentic love speaks across traditions. That said, some features — such as the Relationship Roadmap and the weekly screening questions — draw directly from Catholic sources, so couples unfamiliar with that tradition may find certain references less familiar.

Avila's AI guidance draws exclusively from Catholic sources: Sacred Scripture, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, St. John Paul II's Theology of the Body, and magisterial documents such as Humanae Vitae, Familiaris Consortio, and Amoris Laetitia, as well as the writings of saints and doctors of the Church. Strict boundaries are built into every prompt to ensure the AI never draws from secular psychology, self-help literature, or non-Catholic frameworks as authoritative sources. The goal is guidance that sounds like a wise, orthodox spiritual director — not a life coach.

The AI we use to generate this guidance is Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.6, chosen deliberately after careful evaluation. Faster and less expensive models exist, but Sonnet 4.6 has shown the highest fidelity to the constraints we ask of it: remaining in the voice of a wise spiritual director, honouring both partners charitably, refusing to speculate beyond Church teaching, and holding the line on our theological guardrails over the course of a longer response. For a tool you are trusting with the discernment of your marriage, we would rather you wait a few extra seconds for an answer that is faithful to the Church than receive an instant one that drifts from it.

It's a fair concern, and one we take seriously. Avila is intentionally designed to minimise the time you spend looking at your phone. Questions arrive once a week — not in an endless feed. The Roadmap and Inventories are features you visit occasionally, not daily. When you do open the app together, the goal is to put it down and talk. Even the app's colour palette is deliberately muted and calm, avoiding the bright, stimulating colours that keep people scrolling. Avila is a tool to help you be more present to each other, not less.