Minecraft certainly gets around, and why wouldn’t it? It’s one of Microsoft’s biggest titles that even finds itself being used as an educational tool in schools. It’s a game with many uses, for those who desire survival, but also those who desire creativity. But, rather surprisingly, the Roman Catholic Church has set up its own Minecraft server.
A Catholic priest, Fr. Robert R. Ballecer, SJ posted a poll back in September asking what game should be set up at the Vatican for gamers who want a less toxic experience in video games. The poll included Minecraft, Team Fortress 2, ARK, and Rust. Eventually, the poll ended with Minecraft taking the lead with 64% of 1,136 votes.
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
The story got picked up by Rome Reports who published a video with the priest. The idea behind setting up the server was for gamers to have somewhere to go to that was free of toxicity and allowed players to build relationships and express creativity.
He explained that at first, there were “a lot of people who were hesitant 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 it, they said, ‘wait a minute, these two things don’t go together’ but after time people started realizing 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.”
The test server has become popular, and Ballecer says that it’s being targeted by trolls. In one tweet he mentions that the server logs show a handful of people connecting and disconnecting in a bid to fill the player slots. He explains that he didn’t expect the story to go out this early and is working on resolving the issues with the trolls.
I’m looking at the logs of the Minecraft test server and it looks like there is a handful of people who are constantly connecting and disconnecting to fill the player slots and kill the server.
Interesting…
— Fr. Robert R. Ballecer, SJ (@padresj) December 2, 2019
It seems as if he’s in the process of moving from a test server to a production server. However, the Network Security Enthusiast the priest has onboard seems to have upped the cores and RAM. There are mods on the server too as detailed by a specific tweet in which a user claims to have not been doing anything to get banned. It seems as if the idea is a heartwarming idea which is sadly being ruined by people eager to DDoS the server.
If players wish to jump on the server, they can join in over at minecraft.digitaljesuit.com, although at the time of writing the link appears to be down.
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