Father Greg Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. Homeboy received a $20M from MacKenzie Scott the week we spoke. Father Boyle is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion and two other books. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, President Obama named him a Champion of Change.
Father Greg is the person who taught me how to stand WITH people.
Three main principles:
Healing and tenderness are the key.
Go to the margins. Stand with the people there. Be humble.
Homeboy received a $20M from MacKenzie Scott the week we spoke.
“Especially in the times in which we live where we're so tribal and divided, here's a way for us to speak a different language that's fluent in tenderness and compassionate understanding.”
Fr. Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. While serving as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights, Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings. In 1988 they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of people who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life. Father Boyle is the author of the New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion and two others: Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship and The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness. He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, President Obama named Father Boyle a Champion of Change. He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. Currently, he serves as a committee member of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Economic and Job Recovery Task Force as a response to COVID-19.
Photo Credit: Homeboy Industries
