With the abundance of coverage of the Roman Catholic Church and the Vatican, here’s our show about a Jesuit priest who’s living a life of Christian service that flies under the radar. Father Greg Boyle’s gang intervention programs in Los Angeles are becoming more well-known, but his ideas behind them often get short shrift.
He makes winsome connections between service and delight, and compassion and awe. He heads Homeboy Industries, which employs former gang members in a constellation of businesses. This is not work of helping, he says, but of finding kinship. The point of Christian service, as he lives it, is about “our common calling to delight in one another.”
~Trent Gilliss, senior editor
Gangs are the effect of ineffective communities. Somebody dropped the ball, whether it was the family, the church, the schools…
—Juan Pacheco, a former gang member who leads Barrios Unidos, an alternative gang movement
This article from Discovery News does a good job of introducing gang alternative movements and touches on tattoo-removal as a “reverse baptism,” using smudging as part of ritual and ceremony, and programs to reorient and reintegrate youth into local communities.
Any advice on other voices participating in these movements that we might hear from?
