After running a Twitter poll that encouraged his 23K Twitter followers to choose a game that should have servers at the Vatican, Father Robert Ballecer has now opened a Minecraft server at the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church.
Ultimately, RUST, Ark, and Team Fortress 2 were all left in the dust, with Minecraft securing 64% of the public vote.
“You can invite people who want to be creative, who don’t want to be toxic, and you create an environment in which people can express themselves and build up a relationship,” the tech blogger-turned-priest explained to Rome Reports. “And the relationship thing is the most important part. That’s ultimately what I want to do with the server.”
Ballecer hopes he can build online communities for people who could then “maybe move those relationships to the real world.”
“At first, there were a lot of people who were very hesitant,” Ballecer admitted. “Because you see this guy in a collar talking about the latest offerings from Google, or how you run fiber optics across the Atlantic. And they didn’t understand, they said, ‘Wait a minute, these two things don’t go together.’ But after a time, they realised, ‘Okay, he knows what he’s talking about, he just happens to be a priest.’ And ultimately, that was the ministry I was trying to do.”
Here’s the Vatican Minecraft server, if you fancy it: minecraft.digitaljesuit.com
Wireframe #27 is out now
