A Vatican Priest creates a non-toxic Minecraft server for peaceful play

A Vatican Priest has made plans to create a peaceful Minecraft server to stomp out toxicity in online gaming.

The project, started by Father Robert Ballecer, hopes to create a hate-free environment for gamers to play together. Ballecer, who has a Silicon Valley engineering background, wishes to create a virtual environment where players can express themselves.

Ballecer originally asked his Twitter followers which video game they would like the priest to set up for this project. Out of Rust, Ark: Survival Evolved, Team Fortress 2 and Minecraft, 64% chose the voxel-based survival title.

Interviewed by Rome Reports (thanks, VG24/7) the priest explained that this initiative is solely to create healthy relationships between people across the world.

“It’s not about the technology, it’s not even really about the gaming,” Ballecer told the outlet. “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,”the priest explains. “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 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.”

The Minecraft server is currently in its testing phase with the Vatican Priest looking for feedback. As long as you have access to a paid Minecraft account, you can head over here to join the peaceful server.