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Times look wrong

If a Mass or confession time looks off — say, a 9:00 AM Mass appears as 7:00 AM, or a future event seems to have shifted — the cause is almost always a timezone or schedule-update issue, not a bug in the underlying data. Work through the quick checks first.

Quick checks​

  1. Check your device's clock and timezone. Open your phone or computer's date and time settings. If your device timezone is set incorrectly (or set to "automatic" but currently mistaken because of travel), local-time displays elsewhere on your device may also be wrong.
  2. Refresh the page. A simple refresh re-fetches the schedule and re-renders all times. Older tabs that have been open for hours can show stale data.
  3. Confirm the parish's timezone. Sacramentum displays times in the parish's local timezone, not your device's timezone. If you're traveling or the parish is in a different region, the displayed times are still parish-local. Check your parish's contact page or ask the office if you're unsure which timezone they're in.

Common causes​

All times are off by a consistent number of hours​

If every time on the schedule is shifted by the same amount — for example, every Mass shows two hours earlier than expected — the most likely cause is a timezone mismatch between what's being displayed and what you're expecting.

Sacramentum displays parish-local time on the public Mass and confession schedules. So a parish in America/Chicago always shows its 9:00 AM Mass as 9:00 AM, regardless of where you're viewing from. Calendar exports (.ics files), however, store times in UTC; when your calendar app opens them, it converts to your device timezone — so the same Mass added to your phone calendar from a different region may display in your local time, not the parish's. The Mass is still celebrated at the same instant; only the displayed clock face differs.

If you imported a .ics calendar and the time looks wrong, that's typically the cause and not a problem with your parish's data.

Daylight Saving Time transitions​

In the days right after a DST transition (spring-forward or fall-back), a future event generated under the previous offset can occasionally display at an unexpected hour. This is rare on Sacramentum because schedule events are anchored to parish-local time, but it can happen if a schedule rule was edited around the transition or imported from an external system. A refresh usually resolves it; if not, your administrator can regenerate the affected events.

A future Mass shows the wrong time​

Sacramentum generates individual Mass events from a recurring schedule rule, often weeks or months in advance. If an administrator recently changed the recurring rule (for example, moved the Saturday Vigil from 5:00 PM to 5:30 PM), already-generated future events still carry the old time until they're regenerated.

If you notice this on a public page, contact the parish office and let them know which week or date looks wrong. Administrators: see Managing schedules for how to regenerate future events under the updated rule.

The .ics calendar export shows different times than the website​

This is expected behavior, not a bug. Calendar files (.ics) carry times in UTC plus a timezone identifier; your calendar app then renders them in your device's timezone. If your phone is set to Eastern time and the parish is in Central time, a 9:00 AM parish Mass shows as 10:00 AM on your phone — the actual celebration time hasn't changed, only the clock you're reading it on.

If you want your calendar to display parish-local times, set your device timezone to match the parish, or rely on the Sacramentum website (which always shows parish-local time).

When you're an administrator and the issue is yours to fix​

A few timezone configuration points are administrator-only:

  • Verify the location's timezone. Each location can have its own IANA timezone (for example, America/Chicago). Open the location and confirm. See Managing locations.
  • Verify the parish-default timezone. If a location's timezone is left blank, it inherits the parish default from settings. Confirm both. See Settings reference.
  • Multi-location parishes that span timezones. Each location should have its own timezone explicitly set — don't rely on the parish default for a satellite location in a different region. Setting it explicitly avoids ambiguous behavior on DST transitions.
  • Regenerate future events after a rule change. When you edit a recurring schedule's time, already-created future events keep the old time until you regenerate them.
warning

Changing a location's timezone after schedules have been generated will not retroactively shift the existing events' display times. Fix the timezone first, then regenerate the affected events.

When to contact your parish administrator​

If you've checked your device timezone and refreshed the page and a specific Mass or confession time still looks wrong, contact your parish office. Include:

  • The exact date and time that look wrong
  • What time you expected to see, and what time is showing
  • The page URL (calendar, list view, or specific event)
  • Whether you're viewing the website or an imported .ics calendar
  • Your timezone (if different from the parish)