The other day’s identifying of Chicago native Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV– the very first American-born leader of the Catholic church– has actually currently caused a lot of jokes and memes about his possible interactions with different little bits of American popular culture. Which cultural direct exposure obviously reaches some casual computer game, making Leo XIV our very first validated player pope.

Talking To NBC5 Chicago Thursday, papal brother or sister John Prevost validated that the soon-to-be-pope played a number of video games right before flying to the papal conclave previously today. “First we do Wordle, because this is a regular thing,” Prevost stated. “Then we do Words with Friends. It’s something to keep his mind off life in the real world…”

OK, so the pope’s love of casual word video games does not precisely put him in the exact same classification of individuals who are speedrunning Doom massacre maps. It’s still striking to understand that the 69-year-old pontiff is amongst the reported 44 percent of American Baby Boomer males who play video games frequently and the 15 percent of Americans aged 55 and over who have actually played Wordle particularly

A brand-new generation

In the current past, papal interest in computer game has actually generally taken the type of main declarations decrying their capacity for damage. Pope Francis, for example, cautioned in a 2016 speech that youths ought to prevent costs extreme time on “a sofa that promises us hours of comfort so we can escape to the world of video games and spend all kinds of time in front of a computer screen.” And in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI particularly called out computer game “which in the name of entertainment exalt violence and portray anti-social behavior or the trivialization of human sexuality.”