When it comes to the Vatican, the first thing folks are likely to associate with it isn’t “video games,” and even if they did, probably “Minecraft” would normally be low on the list of specific video games that’d be associated with the Vatican. And yet, here we are, in the year 2019, and a Catholic priest has spun up a Minecraft server in the Vatican. To be clear: this does not appear to be a joke, and is instead a thing that has happened.
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Father Robert Ballecer, a Catholic priest and former tech consultant, initially put out a call on Twitter to see what sort of video game servers folks might be interested in having spun up out of the Vatican, and the overwhelming majority — 64% of 1,136 votes — voted for a Minecraft server over games like Rust or Team Fortress 2.
Ok… I want to spin up a few servers in the Vatican for gamers who want a little less “toxic” and a bit more community.
What should be my first server?
— Fr. Robert R. Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) August 31, 2019
As it turns out, Father Ballecer’s idea because a rather popular reality. While the server was started over at minecraft.digitaljesuit.com, a new update from the priest indicates that more folks flooded the server than expected, and he’ll need to put it on an even bigger virtual machine to handle the load.
Hey Gamer Tweeps… sorry about the Minecraft server getting completely bogged.
This was a test instance and I didn’t expect it to ramp up like this over just a few hours.
I’m working on migrating everything to a bigger VM.
🙂
— Fr. Robert R. Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) December 2, 2019
“I wanted to offer one, in particular, that could be less toxic,” Father Ballecer said in an interview about his reasons for starting up the server. “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.”
What do you think of this Vatican-based Minecraft server? Are you interested in giving it a shot? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!
Minecraft is now available for… just about everything. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the Microsoft-owned video game right here.
[H/T PC Gamer]
