Privacy

The parish, school or diocese does. Parovia runs the software and stores the records on their behalf. Each organisation's information is separated in the database itself, not merely by convention: one parish cannot query another parish's records, and neither can a member of their staff.

What you type or say, and the answer given. On the web this is the message and a random session identifier. By text message it is the message and the number it came from. On the phone it is a written transcript.

Phone calls are not recorded as audio. The assistant works from a transcript and no recording is created or kept. The call says so at the start.

Anything you fill in. If you ask for a Mass intention, a certificate, a school absence or an appointment, what you enter is stored for the office to act on.

When you are handed to a person. If the assistant cannot answer, or the question needs a human, a handoff record is created with your contact details where you gave them and a copy of the recent conversation, so the person who calls you back knows what you already said.

• Conversations: about 13 months, then deleted.
• Text-message delivery records: 90 days.
• Requests the office did not act on: 180 days. Approved requests are kept as the office's own record.
• Past appointments: 180 days.
• Handoff records: the record is kept; the personal content is removed on a schedule the organisation sets.A handoff is the evidence that someone asked for help and what happened next, so the record of it — that it happened, why, when, and how it was handled — is kept. The personal content within it (the message and the conversation) is removed once the organisation's retention window passes; that window is a decision for each diocese and is not set by default. A child's personal content is removed on a shorter schedule once that policy is set. Safeguarding matters, and anything under a legal hold, are kept in full as long as they must be.

Staff at that parish, school or diocese, signed in with their own account. Parovia's own staff see counts and health indicators across organisations — never message content. When we need to look at an organisation's console to support them, that access is time-limited and recorded.

We do not sell information, and we do not use it for advertising.

Parovia uses a small number of suppliers to run: a database and hosting provider, a language-model provider that composes written answers, a text and voice provider, and an email provider for notifying staff. Message content is sent to the language-model provider in order to answer, and is not used to train their models.

Parovia never signs anyone up to work with children, and it never processes a signup from someone who says they are a child — that conversation goes to a person, and the response says a parent or guardian has to do it. A child who needs help reaches a person.

The service is meant for the general public contacting a parish or school, not for children to use directly.

Ask the parish, school or diocese — they hold the records and can act on them, and the assistant will pass a request like this to a person rather than trying to handle it itself.

What a request reaches, plainly. When the organisation acts on a request, the personal content of your handoff records — your message and the conversation — is removed, and the conversation records tied to you are removed. What is kept is the record that a handoff happened and how it was handled, with the personal content taken out.

What it does not reach, and why.Records the office keeps as its own — an approved Mass intention, a certificate request, a booked appointment — are kept as the organisation's record. Safeguarding matters, and anything under a legal hold, are kept in full for as long as they must be. If you asked us to stop texting you, we keep that one instruction precisely so we can keep honouring it. The tamper-evident log of changes staff make is built so it cannot be quietly altered — which is what makes it trustworthy. We would rather tell you exactly what is kept than imply everything disappears.

Start with the parish, school or diocese you contacted. For questions about the software itself, write to Parovia through askparovia.com.