It’s one Jesuit priest against the world, as he takes on the toxicity of online gaming, by making a server on Minecraft.. Yeah, you heard me. But it’s actually not as ridiculous as it sounds. Fr. Robert Ballecer is a Jesuit priest who studied engineering in Silicon Valley, and he wants to introduce the Vatican’s Minecraft server as a place where gamers can express themselves in without people being toxic. It’s mainly to bring about a safe environment where gamers can express themselves, and build relationships with each other through gaming.

I mean, he’s not wrong, there’s a lot of toxic behaviour online, but my question is, why Minecraft? Maybe I haven’t played enough of it or with enough people to have them be toxic towards me. The only thing that comes to mind is when my little brother verbally berated me at 12 for pouring lava on his house he had spent hours making. Kids will be kids, right? But actually, it’s because Ballecer ran a poll on his Twitter on which game they’d prefer the test server on, with the options being; Rust, Ark, Team Fortress 2, or Minecraft. At the end of it, 64% of the votes were for Minecraft.

“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.” said Fr. Robert Ballecer in an interview with Rome Reports.

It doesn’t make sense to me personally, because I tend to avoid toxic games in general. But I never knew for Minecraft to be that toxic. Maybe I’m just old.