A Polish priest has installed a fingerprint reader in order to track the attendance of children at mass.

The pupils will mark their fingerprints every time they go to church over three years and if they attend 200 masses they will be freed from the obligation of having to pass an exam prior to their confirmation, the paper said.

The pupils in the southern town of Gryfow Slaski told the daily they liked the idea and also the priest, Grzegorz Sowa, who invented it.

“This is comfortable. We don’t have to stand in a line to get the priest’s signature (confirming our presence at the mass) in our confirmation notebooks,” said one pupil, who gave her name as Karolina.

Poland is perhaps the most devoutly Roman Catholic country in Europe today and churches are regularly packed on Sundays.

Get them while they’re young. Entice children with the ability to not take an exam for giving up their private, biometric data and they’ll never know what hit them. Just make it easily and they’ll line up like sheep to do whatever you want.