We have a cool Pope now, didn’t you know? Not only does he take selfies and bang hard on Twitter, he’s also, actually showing a bit of progressiveness in a post that has historically favoured tradition over stepping forward. This new, upgraded Pope Edition Francis™ has been very outspoken about his wishes to drag religion into the 21st Century - he accepts homosexuality, he touches those thought to be untouchable, he kisses the feet of prisoners - this Pope is a cool, good, hip and wicked Pope, baby.
So the next stop was obviously getting himself involved in computey games, the lucrative remit of the young’uns - get them on board, and you’re sorted. Pick a very popular game, like, say, Pokemon Go, and throw caution to the biblical wind and simply copy it. Everyone’s going to Heaven.
As such, those that played Pokemon Go but bemoaned the lack of an option to find any Catholic saints to join your powerful evangelisation team, now have the extremely similar JC GO. In the “exciting” game, you wander the real-life streets looking for saints and other biblical characters, before recruiting them and heading off on an adventure to, erm, convert the entire world, or something?
Where this differs from the inferior Pokemon Go is that upon encountering a friendly saint, you do not immediately capture them within an impenetrable ball, you instead simply answer some religious questions before they join your crew. This is cruelty-free recruiting, something the Pokemon games have so far flagrantly refused to address. Vegans may apply, guilt-free.
Celiacs, on the other hand, must refrain, for a large part of your quest involves the unfortunate and elitist pursuit of eating bread, which is a shame. In addition to this disregard for inclusivity, you are also encouraged to pray whenever passing a church or hospital, and you can even actually donate to charity to gain in-game currency, which is nice. Spider-Man PS4, eat your sacreligious heart out!
The app was developed by a third-party developer, but it has received papal blessing direct from the Vatican, which is cool now, remember?
Ricardo Grzona, executive director of developers Fundación Ramón Pané, spoke to Catholic news site Crux Now about JC GO:
“You know, Francis is not a very technological person, but he was in awe, he understood the idea, what we were trying to do: combine technology with evangelization.”
But it’s not the first time God himself, his literal self, has got involved with the gaming market - for who can forget Eternal War: Shadows of Light in which you must destroy the demon hordes with your magic claw-hand; or the classic Ominous Horizons: A Paladin’s Calling, a Christian video game that cost over $1.6 million but sold only 50,000 copies; or perhaps everyone’s favourite, Captain Bible in Dome of Darkness, a game in which you must memorise entire sections of the Bible!
Unfortunately, JC GO, the latest edition to this holy canon, is only available in Italy and Spain at the moment, but expect it to hit our shores soon - and then they’ll be sorry, won’t they? The jocks who said religion wasn’t cool? All those bozos harping on about Red Dead Redemption II? Not when they see you playing JC GO in the park and walking directly into a tree! Eat your words, heathens!
(Images: fundacionpane.org)
