Homeboy Industries is a mission of hope and compassion when it comes right down to it, Jesuit Father Greg Boyle said May 6 during a stop at Saint Mark’s High School in the Diocese of Wilmington.
Father Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, the world’s largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation and re-entry program. He appeared at Saint Mark’s that night as the inaugural speaker in the Spartan Lecture Series, a new initiative designed to bring distinguished guests from across the country to the campus “to educate and inspire our community on a range of engaging topics,” according to the school.
Father Boyle, a native of Los Angeles, was ordained as a member of the Society of Jesus in 1984. He said he wasn’t sure of what he wanted to do, so he asked to go to Bolivia so he could learn Spanish. Upon his return, he was scheduled to become a college campus minister, but his time in South America changed that.
“I begged my provincial, ‘Can you send me to the poorest place where I can speak Spanish?’ And he sent me to Dolores Mission, mainly because nobody wanted to go there,” he said.
Dolores Mission was one of the poorest parishes in Los Angeles. When Father Boyle arrived, immigration was the biggest issue. That changed within two years.
“Then I buried my first young person killed because of gang violence. Then I was having eight funerals in a three-week period. It was intense, nonstop funerals. A response evolved as a community. That became number one. There was no other issue,” he said.
Father Boyle said the mission had eight gangs at war with each other. At the height of the gang wars, the city was experiencing 1,000 gang-related homicides a year, a number that has since been halved twice. Homeboy identified the problem early on.
“Gang violence is about a lethal absence of hope. Nobody has ever met a hopeful kid who has joined a gang,” Father Boyle said.
A donor wanted to do something about the situation, and they bought an abandoned bakery. They needed a name.
“I said, ‘I don’t know. We’ll call it Homeboy Bakery.’ Exactly no thought went into it,” he joked.
That was in 1988. Since then, starting with a school and a jobs program, Homeboy has created a community where people feel safe, seen and cherished, “so transformation happens there,” he said.
“We provided the only exit ramp off this crazy, violent freeway,” Father Boyle said. “It’s one thing to shake your fist at gang members and say, ‘Please, stop it,’ but if they can’t get off the freeway, then what good is that?
Homeboy doesn’t recruit people to attend its 18-month program. There isn’t a gang member in the Los Angeles area who doesn’t know the organization. The program has been so effective that courts are starting to order people to enter Homeboy as an alternative to a prison sentence. But, Father Boyle said, just showing up isn’t enough.
“Our program isn’t for those who need help. It’s for those who want it. You have to want it. It’s like rehab. It doesn’t work unless you walk through the door,” he said.
Father Boyle calls the approach at Homeboy Industries one of healing. The programs focus on feeling. Some of the gang members who go through the program find employment in the workforce, some at Homeboy.
“It’s become our contention that a healed gang member will never reoffend, and that’s been our experience,” he said.
One of the most popular parts of the industries is tattoo removal, with a clinic devoted just to that. There are 43 volunteer doctors who assist, and a waiting list of 1,000. Most want to get the most alarming tattoos removed, such as those on the face or neck.
Father Boyle recalled when Homeboy had the equipment for one hour of tattoo removals per month, so they had to make decisions wisely.
“We all make mistakes, but this is a mistake that can get erased. It takes time and a lot of treatments,” he said.
Father Boyle said he brings his faith, but not his religion to his work at Homeboy Industries. Clients include “every variety of Christian” and all kinds of religions. He describes it as a social apostolate of the Jesuits, but it’s an independent organization, he said.
To him, “homeboy” is a perfect way to describe the organization.
“It means trusted, good, he’s fair with me, he’s a good person,” he said. “Homeboy just means connected.”
The idea has spread to other cities, part of the Global Homeboy Network. There are 300 partners in the United States and another 50 outside the country.
Saint Mark’s president Patrick Tiernan said the goal was to find a speaker who would speak to the school’s core values of faith, excellence, humility and integrity.
“I’m familiar with his work and I thought it would be a great kickoff for us,” he said.
Close to 200 people attended the May 6 address, and Father Boyle, along with two people from the Homeboy program, spoke to the student body the next day.
“That was a piece to it, finding someone who could speak to the full community and the student community. That can be hard to come by,” Tiernan said.
