A Jesuit priest who previously studied engineering in Silicon Valley, Fr. Robert Ballecer, is creating his own Vatican Minecraft server with the aim to create a less-toxic environment that you would normally find in games and where players can freely express themselves.
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As reported by Rome Reports (view the video at the bottom of this article) Fr. Robert Ballecer began this campaign by asking his followers on Twitter what game they would like to see a test server of this nature for, with options like Team Fortress 2, Ark: Survival Evolved and even Rust (yes really) thrown into the mix. Minecraft came out on top with over 60% of the votes and now, there’s a Minecraft Vatican server.
This is all to create a less-toxic environment for gamers and to get people together, build relationships and even move those relationships over into the real world. In the report, Fr. Robert Ballecer explains that:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”#33FFFA” class=”” size=”20″]It’s not about the technology, it’s not even really about the gaming. It’s about getting people together who can then maybe move those relationships to the real world. At first, there were a lot of people who were very hesitant, because you see this guy in a collar talking about the latest offerings from Google, or how you run fibre 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 realized, ‘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.[/perfectpullquote]
If you own the game, you can head on over to minecraft.digitaljesuit.com to join the Minecraft Vatican server.
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Check out the video below where Fr. Robert Ballecer speaks about the Vatican Minecraft server and the idea behind all this.
[su_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkYjxCkEcd4″ width=”900″]
