From Tampa to “Twilight: to Taylor Swift, Father Robbie Cotta has a pretty eventful life… and that’s not even mentioning the priesthood.
Our new part-time chaplain is now spending time at St. Pius X in addition to his role as parochial vicar at Immaculate Heart of Mary.
Ordained in 2021 after attending the Mundelein Seminary in Chicago, Father Robbie roomed with two former St. Pius X chaplains: the infamous Father Michael Bremer and (for our older Golden Lions) Father Rey Piñeda.
(Check out Father Robbie’s insane Father Michael impersonation here.)
Father Robbie and Father Michael’s bromance grew from the moment they began seminary in 2014. Father Robbie was placed in the room right below Father Michael’s, and the two used to torment each other (in the most holy ways possible, of course).
For example, when Father Robbie would jump up and down and bang on the floor as loud as he could, Father Michael would steal his cell phone and set a Siri alarm for the middle of the night.
“There were some times where my phone would go off at 2:30 in the morning,” Father Robbie said.
Despite its occasionally fun, lighthearted nature, the vocation often puts priests under emotionally draining conditions.
Compare, for instance, talking with cheerful students during a lunch period to attending the bedside of child cancer patients. As extreme as this may sound, it’s a priest’s job to serve according to the community’s needs, no matter how demanding it may be.
“We’re constantly being pulled in a lot of directions,” Father Robbie said. “We’re wearing a lot of different hats.”
Yet in today’s workaholic culture, Father Robbie and friends (such as Father Rey, Father Michael, Father Joe Wagner, Father Ben Thompson, Father Mike Metz, and Father Paul Porter) prioritize their mental health through sharing their lives, supporting each other, and observing what Father Rey calls “a holy day of no obligation.”
This can include anything from fishing, disc golf, and even motorcycling.
“I finally convinced my dad to give me his motorcycle,” Father Robbie said.
So, is he a motorcycle priest?
“Oh yeah.”
It’s easy to forget that priests are just like any other person. They listen to country music in the car with the windows down. They go to baseball games with their fathers. They run track in high school.
“Priests do not grow on trees,” Father Robbie said. “We come from normal families and normal schools.”
Although that’s not to say Father Robbie doesn’t have some hot takes. For example, he is not a fan of Taylor Swift.
“Let me give her credit. I’m gonna have my Kanye moment with her; I’m gonna let T-Swift finish,” Father Robbie said. “What I don’t understand is the hype… the things people are willing to do to get tickets to this concert right now I cannot believe… it’s wild. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Don’t hate on Father Robbie, though – according to him, the Taylor Swift shade is just a joke.
“I like to throw shade for fun,” he said.
Maybe it’s a good reflection on what we value in our lives right now. Is our top priority God or the latest craze, whether that’s Taylor Swift concerts or Lionel Messi tickets?
Maybe the difference between priests and the rest of us is pretty simple: God is their #1 priority. All the time. For the majority of the population, this distinction makes it hard to relate to priests. How do they maintain such a constant and deep devotion?
When he was seven, his parents asked him, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” Father Robbie didn’t say a firefighter or the president.
He said, “I want to be a priest.”
And, as we well know, he is.
There’s a word– attraction– for how he felt about the priesthood, even from an early age. And then, faced with senior-year temptations in high school, he’d lost it.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t want God… for Father Robbie, it was more of a moral dilemma– one where he could either be a good Catholic that didn’t do anything wrong or just do whatever he wanted. There was seemingly no in-between.
“Looking back, I wish I’d known that the messiness of your humanity is always going to be there,” Father Robbie said. “It’s okay to be Catholic and not have your life together.”
A diehard UGA fan who grew up in Johns Creek and attended Chattahoochee High School, Father Robbie, although a good student, was a bit of a trickster who gained a reputation for messing around in class. He applied to Georgia Southern and nowhere else, looking to become a broadcasting journalist with a minor in political science.
Just like that, a life plan fell into place. Or so he thought.
“I was going to be one of those people that you see on the White House lawn,” Father Robbie said.
With a girlfriend looking to teach in Sarasota, Florida, Father Robbie intended on moving to Tampa, where he would pursue an entry-level job in the radio industry.
It was only when he came home before his last semester of college that everything changed.
A friend from his old Lifeteen group invited him to St. Brigid, the first Mass his friend presided over as a newly-ordained priest. Little did Father Robbie know that this Mass would move him to tears.
“It was very clear that the Lord had reawakened that attraction in my heart,” Father Robbie said. “It was almost like reminding me of, ‘Robbie, this is what I made you for.'”
He knew he wanted to be a priest because he wanted to be a priest. As simple as that. And Holy Orders, a beautiful, ancient ceremony of priestly ordination, gave him the assurance he needed.
Because, when it’s right for you, you just know.
And on the day of his first mass, well…
“I brought my entire history with me when I lay down in front of the altar that day,” Father Robbie said.
However, there is another account of how exactly Father Robbie became a priest. While not nearly as emotional, this version involves actor Taylor Lautner. (Exciting, I know)
Lautner, famous for the “Twilight” series and “The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D”, began studying extreme martial arts at six years old. He ranked #1 worldwide for NASKA’s Black Belt Open Forms at 11 and had three Junior World Championships under his ‘black belt’ by the age of 12.
But Lautner wasn’t the only kid doing karate in the early 2000s. Before becoming famous, Father Robbie knew him as the “little spiky-haired kid” in his division who “could do flips and kicks and stuff.”
Then, one day, this little spiky-haired kid wasn’t at the competitions anymore.
Suddenly, the little kid was Shark Boy. And then he was in “Spy Kids.” And then in “Twilight”??
“Maybe I’m just salty,” Father Robbie said. “Because maybe there’s something in me that thinks maybe I could have been like Jacob in ‘Twilight,’ and I could have been the famous one. I could’ve been Shark Boy.”
This leads me to the second (but very unlikely) motive for joining the vocational life. I can see the headline right now… Priest Because He Couldn’t be in Twilight.
Whatever you may believe about how Father Robbie ended up as a priest, I think we can all agree that St. Pius is a better place with him here… whether serving an all-school Mass or interrupting a boring lecture in class (my favorite).
Immaculate Heart of Mary is a lucky school to have him; now we are, too.
Although, as much as Father Robbie had to say about everything from Kanye to the Georgia Bulldogs, his outlook on the priesthood is actually quite simple.
“I haven’t regretted it a day since.”
