Alex Jones, (mechanical engineering, class of 2015) co-founded Hallow in 2015
In a first ever prime time event, Hallow, the number one prayer app in the world, will pause the Super Bowl on Feb. 11, with a prayer led by actors Jonathan Roumie and Mark Wahlberg.
The commercial will play to an anticipated 115 million-plus viewers.
Roumie is best known for his portrayal of Jesus in “The Chosen,” a TV show about the life of Jesus while Wahlberg played Father Stu in a film with the same name.
Post Super Bowl update: here is the ad in its entirety.
Hallow, a company co-founded by University of Notre Dame alumni Alex Jones, Erich Kerekes and Allesandro DiSanto, purchased the ad during the Super Bowl for two reasons: as a lead-in to the Lenten season which begins February 14 and to continue to attract users to its platform.
To date, Hallow has secured more than 15 million registered users and according to a tracker on its website, users have prayed more than 402 million prayers.
In May 2023, Hallow was the first prayer-based app ranked among the top ten most popular apps in Apple’s App Store.
Jones launched Hallow in 2018 as a result of his own pursuit of faith through prayer. In the Notre Dame IDEA Center’s profile of Jones in 2020, he admits he fell away from Catholicism while a student at Notre Dame, attending Mass for social rather than prayerful reasons. Jones says his college years were a relatively dark and empty time in his life.
Post-graduation and feeling the need to determine what he believed from a faith perspective, he consulted with a priest at Notre Dame who reintroduced him to the power of prayer. While meditating with scripture, Jones broke down into tears. “The passage was about Jesus teaching the Lord’s prayer. The word ‘hallow,’ to make holy, stuck in my mind. It gave me a deep sense of peace—and changed my life.”
Whether or not Hallow’s Super Bowl ad changes lives remains to be seen, but its unexpected moment of prayer promises to be an important moment for Jones and this Notre Dame startup.