Fr. Rob Galea and Danii Sullivan talk about the importance of authentic witness, and the role of the church to evangelise and spread the gospel message.
Fr. Rob interviews Gary Pinto on how he lives out his life in a true and authentic way in his role as a well known musician in a secular industry.
An OSV Podcasts partner. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.
Fr. Rob Galea and Danii Sullivan talk about the importance of authentic witness, and the role of the church to evangelise and spread the gospel message.
Fr. Rob interviews Gary Pinto on how he lives out his life in a true and authentic way in his role as a well known musician in a secular industry.
An OSV Podcasts partner. Discover more ways to live, learn, and love your Catholic faith at osvpodcasts.com. Sharing stories, starting conversations.
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Catholic influencer podcast, a conversation to help Catholic influencers just like you and me to go deeper and further in influencing our world for Jesus. I'm your host, Father Rob Galea, and I'm your cohost Danii Sullivan, and we look forward today to talking to you about authenticity.
Speaker 2:Hey Danii. Hi Father Rob. How's it been? It's been good. It's just so good and it's such a great opportunity for us today to talk about authenticity, how important it is for people to be authentic when they share a message of hope, when they share their relationship with Jesus. Is that right?
:Absolutely. It's just so much more attainable when someone is authentic. It's not up on some high ladder that seems like it's impossible for normal people to reach when people are authentic, share their heart. It just makes it, I dunno, so much easier to be like,'you know what? I can try for that too.' That's right. And even when you see these holy people, sometimes when it is authentic, when you see that it comes from a real relationship with God and not an idealistic place, somehow it becomes achievable or something almost desirable.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You know, there's, there's so many beautiful people where you look at them and they're beautiful because they seem holy or you know, outwardly they're beautiful, but there's something deep within that you want. And it's beauty that comes from this authentic place. And from the heart we like, you know what? I want that. I want to be like that. Exactly. It's just so attractive and it's desirable like you said.
:Yeah. And I meet so many holy people, you know, and I can say this'cause I'm not disclosing anything, but sometimes even I'm hearing confessions, you know, as a priest, and I'm hearing and I'm hearing the confessions of some of these people and now as they're, they're ashamed of, of sharing these things I start to think'this is a holy person.' But it comes from a real authentic place. Because I think authenticity, one of the things of authenticity is realizing that it's not by our own strength. Our holiness is not by our own strength, but it's by a grace given to us, by God. And so today what we wanted to talk a little bit about is being an authentic witness of the gospel. So sometimes we get people talking to us about Jesus, people talking to us and preaching at us. But we started to think, well, I'm not so sure about that. That doesn't really apply to my life because I don't see it being applied in the life of the people around us. So what we will do today, and at the end of this little conversation, that Danii and I will have. We'll also have a time of interview. We're going to interview one person who I believe to be one of the most authentic, authentic witnesses in Australia. That's a pretty big call. I also think you're a bit biased though. You are pretty good friends with him. I am. But I know this person very well as well as his, his performance, his stage persona. As we talk a little bit about authenticity, being an authentic witnessed, it obviously starts from one place and with this thing I'm sure you have heard a thousand times before, but it comes to the fact that you cannot give what you do not have. Okay. I think this is the key of authenticity. It's one recognizing that we cannot give and we cannot lead people to where we have not been. And I see this often. I see people telling, and Jesus saw that often in the scriptures. He saw the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They all went out to preach the gospel, but they weren't authentic.
Speaker 2:And why? I give you a guess,
:I didn't know that this is like a question and answer time because they didn't have that relationship with Jesus. Yes, that's a good answer. But they weren't living out what they were saying and that's what it comes down to. It feels like a really intense classroom. I have to answer correctly. And there's no one else to answer for me, But it was a good answer. Okay, thanks. So as we talk a little bit about authenticity, I was reading, I was as preparing for this, there are two things that came to my mind is Mark:16 Jesus says to his disciples, go into all the world and preach the gospel of creation. As I was meditating on this, I was thinking of a quote attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi. Now I'll give you a guess.
Speaker 2:What do you think that is? But this is attribute it to him. But some people say it wasn't actually him who said it. And what does that quote Danii?
:You have probably got it written in front of you, but it is preached the Gospel at all times and when necessary, use words? And only when necessary. You forgot the word only. Only when necessary. Use words. That's right. So, and it's saying that preach with your lifestyle, but the reality is we do need to use words because we can use that as an excuse. Like, Hey, I don't need to preach. I don't need to talk about Jesus. I don't need to talk about my relationship with God. But the thing is we do, because people, we have a hope. We have something. If we have a relationship with God, I think comes with a responsibility to share it with others.
Speaker 2:And the, so I think this is so important. But then another quote, I'm gonna read from a document of the church. Um, it's when you don't trust me with, no, I won't let you, I won't ask you to call this and not even to pronounce this. Um, this is taken from Yvonne Jelly. Naughty Andy. So, which, um, which of the quote is that? The, this is Pope Paul the sixth. He wrote this in his encyclical and in his letter, and it says this, the church exists to, I'll give you a guest here. The church exists to evangelize is that's what you're going to say. And that's, I got really scared classroom. That's right. So the church exists to evangelists. So it's our responsibility to Evangelize, to proclaim the gospel. And very often it does. It does require words. And so, uh, and it's so easy a for a priest to do that. It's so easy like to see a priest talk about Jesus and think it's only the priests responsibility. Yeah. I find that like, okay, I can't pronounce evangelic comes and needs. Um, so you know, I don't need to use words cause I don't have the right words, but it doesn't matter what words I use, I just have to be authentic, share my story. And that's it. If I have that relationship with Jesus, if I'm striving for holiness, I don't need the big words. I just need true words. And there's true words, they're just going to come from my life. And the, and the greatest authenticity of the Gospel is not as not intellect. It's experience. It's an encounter with God. And so it starts with prayer. So we can't really be authentic witnesses of the gospel if we don't pray. We don't speak to God if we don't allow God to, in a sense, impact our hearts, to evangelize our hearts, Duke, to fill our hearts with the Gospel and soul. This proclamation of the Gospel comes from an overflow of our relationship with God of our prayer. So that's where it all starts. I was reading this story, um, of the, of this philosopher named Kircher Guide, that's also a complicated word, but to cook or God says this, he says, there's this story of this circus on the top of a mountain and these clowns and these animals and these lions and tigers and acrobats all gather around for this circus. But all of a sudden as they're going, I'm standing on this mountain. They see that the city from the bottom is catching on fire and the whole city, which is built on the mountain, is catching on fire. And so the people in the, in the crowd on top all of a sudden gets get old egg, someone gold down and tell the people that they're about to die. And so nobody volunteers to go to, to, to proclaim this news. But the clown says, okay, I'll go. So the clown goals goes on his bicycle. He dresses in his client, he's still dressed in his clown gear with his big nose. And with the, with the big horn on the small bike and he goes through the city and he starts pressing the horn and he goes, guys, get out of here. Get out of here. And the, the city's about to burn. And w you know what the people did in this story? Well, it'd be a pretty Einsteinian show. Exactly. So they came out into the streets and they applauded and they laughed and they were entertained by it. Kierkegaard says, by the end of it, they all burnt and died. But you see I the way, this is the way, somehow I see the priest sometimes it's not that the priest is a clown because the priest should be an authentic witness. But that's how people sometimes perceive the priest. They think that hey, that his mentor talk about Jesus so we can just let him continue talking about Jesus. But what about you? What about me? What about the teacher? What about the parents? What about the person on the street who has had an encounter with Jesus? How important it is for them to share the Gospel? Yeah, it is. It's the responsibility of everyone. If the point of the church is to Evangelize, the church isn't made up of priests. It's made up of young people, old people, parents, students. We are the church and it's our responsibility to evangelize, so we have to use words, not just the praise, not just the great public speaker that you see on Youtube, black. It is every single person within the churches responsibility to share that truth that we know. Absolutely. Absolutely, and it's a truth that we know the word you said no is it did not and knowledge, but it's an a knowledge through through experience and the and going out to evangelize, going out to proclaim what we have experienced, but also the clever evangelizer. The authentic evangelize also is able to read the signs of the Times because it's depends. You can have an experience but not know how to proclaim it. We're not talking about standing on a street corner and preaching, but about being by serving others, loving others. It. W W we can do things through our actions, but also by the way we live and the way we put others first, but also reading the signs of The Times and speaking the Gospel in a way that people can and swallow that people can understand. I think that's like such a power of social media these days is that you can be an authentic witness on social media where there's like, you know, you're not going to be able to speak to 1 billion people, but you have the potential to reach that many bepal and you know what a privilege it is that we live in this time where we can share that news so much further than you know, 50 years ago you would've had to getting your little car and drive down to the next town, but now just within seconds we can share the gospel message that we know to thousands of people and that's it. But also again on social media, their requirement to be authentic there and not reach it people through images. Even sometimes we preach at people even simply through images and telling people they have to believe this, they have to understand this. But also walking with people through our humanity. And again, that's another point of an authentic witness who not afraid to, to witness through their humanity and recognizing that they are weak as well. That they are human as well. I get a lot of criticism on my social media. I don't know why. A lot of my criticism is it because sometimes I, I emphasize the human, you know, I like my gym selfies, I must admit to me, but that's part of our weakness. Yeah, I did. I've worked out before. I've never didn't know that, didn't know that at all. Those of you who are listening outside of Australia, this is Australian sarcasm for you. I'm sorry father, I've go way back. So there's lots of love and respect there, but so I hide it well, but this is, um, also like as a, as priests, you know, who are evangelists. It's not just about putting holy pictures up and not about Bible quotes, but also showing the humanity because people connect at the end of the day with your humanity. So anyway, I think it's about time we hand over to the interview. Absolutely. So father of, I'm pretty upset
Speaker 3:that I couldn't be there to help you interview this incredible artist and man, he is an authentic witness to the faith, the way that he lives out his daily life, his professional life. And of course that is as we introduced last episode, Gary Pinto. So you've got to sit down with him and just have a chat about how he lives out his faith in his quite secular industry. So He's a very well known and very talented musician here in Australia and also around the world he's performed. So here's the interview that you had with Gary Pinto.
Speaker 2:So a very exciting friend of mine is here joining us in the studio here for Catholic influences. A man who has influenced my life in great many ways, but also has influenced the lives of so many people. He's in the entertainment industry, has sung and played on thousands of stages. But every time I see this man, I'm always impressed that at how he brings his faith to the stage, to the people around him and with me in the studio. I have none other than Gary Pinto. Ron, how are you? I'm well, how are you doing brother? That was a great introduction. Massive guys. It's such a pleasure to have this interview with you to have this conversation about being a Catholic influencer because you know as well as I do, how hard it is to be a Catholic today. Even the minute you mentioned that you are a Catholic, all of a sudden people sort of close doors, they move. They just hardened hearts in a sense. But I don't, somehow it doesn't seem to be so with you it might have been, it might not be as it seems, but I always just see people saw open and and and so incredibly ready to receive the love that you give them. And you are unashamedly talk about Jesus all the time. So tell me, tell me a little bit about what you do and how you, how you doing what you do.
Speaker 4:Well, I see my role as an intercessor. So wherever I am, whether it's leading a band or behind a band or a mentoring, a young singers or artists, I'm always interceding for whoever I'm with. I'm asking God to bless him in Jesus name and shine his, His grace and his light and his holy spirit into their lives and for him to release him of any bondages or anything. So I'm continually praying for whoever I'm with. So in that I know that God is unlocking the doors to their hearts rather than me trying to, um, even initiated a conversation. I asked God to initiate what he wants to and when the opportunities arise enough, even if I fill a position on praying for that opposition to be broken down. So I've, I've noticed as you've noticed, that the people would, will accept hearing about Jesus so freely because he opens the door. God's spirit opens the doors for those conversations. And you see, you work in an industry which is not a Christian industry. You work in an industry,
Speaker 2:you are the vocal coach on the x factor in Australia. You, you've sung for big pop artists and you've toured the world with these amazing artists and
Speaker 4:none, not many would be Christian around you, but yet to recently I went to a concert of yours and I'm just seeing you at the back singing with other backing vocalists. And I saw you trace the sign of the cross and make the sign of the cross on the person singing with you. And they were readily accepting it even though I know they're not practicing Catholics. Well, that's amazing that just that one concert that you were at, that friend of mine had actually said he was suicidal about a month before or maybe three months before. And I said to him, I want to do a show with you. Oh, I want to be around you. And he said, I want to be around you. There's something, you know, I love your faith. I said, yeah. I said, God loves you so much and you have such a beautiful man and you're a wonderful blessing and God is the greatest purpose is for you. And he's, and he sort of, um, so when the show's came up, I said to my wife and my goodness, these songs, there's so many songs to learn, but I s I just said, I have to do these for this one, man. I want to be around him. So we did the show. And, um, but before the concert, I said, let's pray together. Can we pray it? He said, yeah. Prayed. And at the sh he had, after he finished his song, he did a sign of the cross on his own and his own body. And then he came off and he said, when we prayed, I felt something. I felt something. So I said, thank you, Jesus, that you knew that that conversation three months ago was going to lead to him feeling your power in some way. So that's all I know I am, is just to be there as gods, um, conduit or he's, he's missing to be able to just have to tell people that they loved and pray with them so that they can feel God's love and then have a personal friendship with this man. But do you ever get scared like that people are gonna make fun of you or embarrass you or reject? You know, I don't get scared. I, I just keep praying through it. If I just keep praying for the right thing to say and I get more scared of the times. It has been two times in my life that I haven't acted on. Maybe more, there'd be more obviously, but two or three times I can really remember when I didn't act upon what God was telling me to do. And I, I just, I greatly regret then I said, Lord, I will not feel your power moving me and not do anything about it. That's what scares me the most because I didn't think you could have told somebody that God's Love was there for them and it could have affected change in their life when it did, when you should've spoken for them, because we're all dead to be God's messengers and, and you might then want, and he goes message, if you are not the ones saying it prompts you to do it, you have to do it. It's not about, because he, he will soften their hearts in at the right time. Yes. And I just see this also, you're working with, with celebrities. For example, I know two circumstances. One is, um, I can't remember their names at the moment, but one of the spice goes, you know, you, you dragged her to mass. Well, she dragged us. She was amazing. She said it was Melby and she's a good friend of ours in a, I love her to death. Um, she, uh, was, she said, you know, Gary, I want to, I want to come to, I want to come to church with you one day. I said, great. Okay. Um, the one, the one mess I go to is, and she would ask me week by week you up. And she was having a difficult time at that time in her life. And it was actually a time where it was very tumultuous fora. And I didn't know, she wrote a book, she wrote it in her book. Oh yeah, that's the difficulty. She went. So she said, um, you know, you, you go to church a lot, you know, that's my terrible English accent. And I said, yes. I said, well, let's count. Let's go. So she said, I'm so Guy Sebastian said, oh, come along. Mel Goes, no, no, no, I want to go by myself anyway, so we turn up to church, 10:30 PM Randwick mess. And as I'm, she is just pitch black and there's just candles, you know, no light. And when she came out of the church, people were just looking, so the I've what is Melby doing in math? But she loved the fact that she could sit in the presence of God and be just loved and hugged. And she said, give me the times of the other masters. Give me the times of the other methods and it's amazing that she came to you to ask cause she knew that you had faith. And this is sometimes that's sometimes we're ashamed to say that we're Catholic. We're ashamed to say that we believe in God and before the fear that people are going to judge us. But it's actually from seeing you as an influencer, as a Catholic influencer. I see. It's the opposite. I praise God because I always think when, when that, that little doubt comes in my head, it says, if you don't Stanford, what's it scripture when, um, if you, if you're ashamed of me, I'll be ashamed of you. And I'm like, no, I'm never going to be shamed you, Jesus as a thing. It always comes when that, when that little trepidation comes with speaking, then I go, no, I'm not going to be ashamed of God because he said that I definitely not. He's so good to us. Yeah. And it's I, and it's just beautiful to watch because I think one thing that people do see in you is authenticity. You don't try to be a preacher. You don't try to it. People just see that you live your faith, that even under your breath, before you singing, you're praying, you're, you're saying praise God in everything. Everyone calls you brother as well, Ron brother and my brother. And you're not afraid to do that. And that's why I think it's such a powerful thing that you have. And that is authenticity. And when people see that we are authentic, we are not putting on an act and we have found true joy in our space. People want what we, that's right. Absolutely. And it's not for me to be in those, in, in, in bands or in any situation and go, cause I don't know what their life has been to this point ever. I don't know what a shaped him, I don't know what has happened to them in their life. If I'm to say, uh, you know, I'm going to judge them and it's not me. It's not my position. It's my position to pray for whoever I'm with, to love them and to continue even when I'm not with them, to keep them in my prayers. I have to keep remembering to pray for my bandmates and my friends. It's just like a lord, bless him and bless their families, released some of everything is not a view and continued to, but, and then I find every time the people who have been with the most throughout my career in bands, the people have prayed for the most. She's incredible it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you're sharing as sort of an intimacy, a spiritual intimacy that is so rare, but they don't even know. I'm praying for them and setting thing and they, as soon as I'll pray for somebody after a year, I forget to pray, I'll get a call within the next week or two weeks. Hey, can we come back on the road? I'm like, sure. Just God. Just, you know, it takes us where he wants us to be. As you, you always in the, in father, you were at, um, expect and you were this one. One person came to father and he was having a difficulty and the life he led was completely away from the Church and away from God. But father was able to just give him the love of God and that has changed his life. It has. And what the story like it happened was, um, he didn't, I just stood outside the extract that encouraged by you because you were around. And I said, Hey, I'm going to pray if anyone wants to come and join me. And he came and joined us. Everyone else did. And he came up to me and said, I don't know what it was, but I felt something. Can you do it again? It's amazing. And it kept wanting the next spiritual high, but, and then I left the show and he started to come to you for this. We're all tag teams. That's how we're supposed to be. Amazing. But anyway, as we conclude this interview, I just quickly a new chapter in your life now, a Catholic influence. So within your family new edition, how do you feel about that? A new baby, his wife and yeah, that's the best. Um, I, I thought my heart was full, being married, and then I had this little bear joy and I miss joy and it's just equally loved my wife and my little baby God first my wife and baby afterwards. But it's just the greatest cause she's just beautiful looking at her. She wake up in the night and the first thing is my buddy's like, oh my goodness. No, look at her and go, oh my goodness. How beautiful. This is amazing. But this is a great opportunity as well now to influence the life and the heart of this little joy. Yeah. We pray over her and for her every day. Oh Wow. Beautiful. And we're about to prepare for her baptism as well. You're going to looking forward to that. And from then then comes the responsibility of course, to influence her life for Jesus when we Gary Pinto, it's been a pleasure to have you on this podcast. I wish you all the best. I pray for you and I ask the listeners also to pray for you, for your ministry. And you don't preach in churches, but you're out there bringing the gospel of Jesus. So we thank God for you and may God bless you and let his face shine upon you. Thank you. You're a blessing to us. Massive blessing to our family.
Speaker 5:Thank you so much for joining us for our very first podcast. We're so excited to have you here listening at Catholic influences. This is a podcast for you to transform a generation, big and bold and radical disciples to influence the world for Jesus. So get in touch with us with any comments, questions at
Speaker 6:Frg Ministry, social media, or FMG, ministry.com forward slash podcast
Speaker 1:wavy.