Fr Rob Galea is no stranger to India with his daily Masses being viewed by most Goans during the pandemic. His music inspires the listeners to turn their moments of worry, impatience, fear and grief to those of faith and courage. He has been to Potta Retreat Centre thrice and this is the first time he is visiting Goa and India since the pandemic. Greeted with smiling faces in the state, he is already in love with Goa. Fr Rob will be live in concert today, September 9 at Pilar at 6 pm.
“I’m just in love with this place and the people. I love how people respond to the Word of God with joy and enthusiasm. And I will leave this place physically exhausted, but emotionally, mentally and spiritually challenged. So I love it, like, I will drop everything to come here,” says Fr Rob Galea, who flew in from Australia.
Fr Rob’s life is truly inspirational and shows how a teenager who has lost his way in life and went through addiction and bad company, can still find God especially through music. Now he uses the same music to lead other youngsters to God. “The ultimate part is I’m just using whatever I have to proclaim Jesus. I’ve discovered my relationship with God and I’m going to use whatever platform and opportunity I have to proclaim Jesus. Sometimes, it reaches young people, sometimes it reaches older people but whatever I have, I’m going to use it to reach out to people,” says Fr Rob.
With eight music projects to his credit, Fr Rob Galea recently released a new single ‘Feel the Light,’ which is a high-energy song with lyrics from the Gospel of Matthew and a short AI-generated music video, which shows Fr Rob change into an animated persona. “The song was written with an indie pop artist from Melbourne, Thomas Byrne. I wanted to write a pop song as that is music I enjoy, and it happens to reach to a lot of young people. I asked this young pop artist, can you tell me your favourite Bible verse. And we wrote a song about his favourite verse, which was ‘Come to me, all you who are weak and weary. And I will give you rest.’ During the music video, we wanted a relevant or an easy solution. And that was AI at the moment. We thought, let’s try, why not? We experimented and it was cost effective and it turned out well too,” says Fr Rob about the song.
This young and energetic Catholic priest, who serves in the Diocese of Sandhurst, Victoria, Australia, also uses every social media platform to proclaim the Word of God. From his short reels on Instagram and Facebook which is posted every day and church activities, how does he plan his day? “I have a good team of 11 members around me that work wisely. At the weekends, I work in the parish, but during the week, I work from a film studio in Melbourne, and with the team that plans the content. We sometimes film content at once, and then another team member breaks it up. So it looks like I’m busy but I sat for two hours and created 20 pieces of content. I don’t feel I’m overworked all the time as I’m enjoying what I’m doing. Like today, during our breaks, we went and did some filming. Then, we’ll break that up into 2, 3 or 4 pieces including the two pieces while I was at the gym,” explains Fr Rob.
Fr Rob is also very health conscious and is often seen at the gym in his videos. However, he informs that he is not breaking any stereotypes, “I’m just being myself. If I did it to break a stereotype, I’d be exhausted. Because I’m trying to be something I’m not. I’m just me and accept it, if you want, don’t accept it, if you don’t want.”
Fr Rob released his debut book, ‘Breakthrough’ in 2018 and since then, it has been a bestseller in the US and now it’s being made into a Hollywood movie. The film will be directed by Adrian Carr and will star Shawn Mendes, another pop teen sensation. The working title of the film is ‘Do It Scared’. “The book, ‘Breakthrough’ is a story of my conversion. I wrote that a few years ago and published it, it became a bestseller in the US. It is from a place of hopelessness to finding hope and my passion and desire to help people. I have meetings with the producer and the director but they give me very little information because I don’t own the rights. They own the rights of the book and they want to keep it as close as possible to the book. They have to combine a few characters together. Now there is discussion of them putting it into a Netflix series. My story is interesting, but not that interesting for 12 episodes. So they need some poetic license to do that,” he adds.
To begin this story of a Maltese teenager dealing with hopelessness to a priest that inspires the congregation, there was another priest to lead him to priesthood. “Fr Giovanni was instrumental in helping me discover my desire for priesthood. I had a girlfriend at the time and I didn’t want to become a priest. I was happy to get married. I was studying for a degree in commerce. I was taking over my dad’s business. While I was giving a concert in Italy, there was this priest who was so full of joy in life. And I remember thinking, ‘God, I don’t want to be a priest. But if I’ll be anything like this priest, I’ll consider it’. And we became friends. And eventually, I broke up with that relationship. My ex-girlfriend and I are still very close friends,” explains Fr Rob.
Through the year, Fr Rob does seven or eight international trips a year and speaks to at least 40 or 50 high schools everywhere. However, his primary responsibility is the FRG Ministry, a Catholic non-profit global media and outreach Apostolate.
‘Breakthrough’ will be available at the venue on the day of the concert and Fr Rob gives a brief about his next book too, “I’m working on another book at the moment which will focus on being healthy in body, mind and soul. This book will have parts of my life. A lot of it will be testimonial stories about mental health. As well as, as a priest, how someone who suffers with depression and anxiety, how do I balance my life. How do I balance my busyness and my moments of failure. Nothing is published yet,” concludes Fr Rob, as he packs as much as he can in his Goa itinerary.