The Vatican Is Hosting Its Own Minecraft Server

Tired of toxicity? Father Robert R. Ballecer, a Catholic priest, recently opened a Minecraft server dedicated to hosting a friendly, creative community free of toxicity. His efforts, although not officially endorsed by the Vatican, are being called "the Vatican's Minecraft server."

Ballecer is a former tech blogger whose project started as nothing more than a poll on Twitter. "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?" Out of Minecraft, Rust, ARK, and Team Fortress 2, 64% of those polled opted for Minecraft. 

Now that the Minecraft server is up and running, Ballecer hopes it will foster new friendships. In an interview with Rome Reports, he said: "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. And the relationship thing is the most important part. That's ultimately what I want to do with the server."

Today, Ballecer noted there might be some toxicity within the server already, tweeting: "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..." Some players may be attempting to sabotage the project. Or, perhaps, its popularity has bogged down the server. 

According to his Twitter, Ballecer plans on "migrating everything to a bigger VM" to support the huge number of players who apparently want to be a part of the non-toxic community on the (again, unofficial) Vatican Minecraft server. Despite troubles getting the server up and going, Ballecer remains optimistic. "Yeah... it got popular WAY too fast. (And of course... it attracted a lot of trolls!)" said the priest. "We need to deal with the growing pains, but we're definitely looking for mods."