For the past 35 years, Jesuit Priest Greg Boyle has given his life to helping turn gang members’ lives around through Homeboy Industries.
The largest gang intervention, rehab and reentry program “on the planet,” it sees more than 10,000 gang members a year walk through its doors.
Boyle was the featured speaker at Odessa College Honors Tuesday at the Odessa Marriott Hotel & Conference Center.
CBS7 Anchor Jay Hendricks was the emcee.
Boyle also spoke Monday night at the OC Sports Center. For each engagement, he brought Homeboys Jarvis Thompson and Solomon McIntosh.
The individuals and organizations honored for their impact in education were:
>> Angie Hurt King – Outstanding Individual.
>> XTO Energy – Outstanding Business.
>> The Junior League of Odessa – Outstanding Non-Profit.
>> The late Buddy Hale – Outstanding Educator.
Videos with representatives from each recipient were played before their awards were presented.
Boyle said they have 11 social enterprises such as bakeries and restaurants in LA.
“We started a thing called the Global Homeboy Network, so there are 300 programs in the United States and 50 outside that are modeled on Homeboy,” Boyle said.
“I was the pastor of the poorest parish in the city (Dolores Mission) that had the highest concentration of gang activity, so I couldn’t very well ignore it. We started a school and then businesses and now we’re quite large,” Boyle said in a media availability before the event.
“… In the beginning it was about gang members for those 300 programs and then it was returning citizens; then it was homeless. So it’s kind of a model that people use for addressing complex social dilemma,” Boyle said.
He added that the program sticks, but it’s a rehab.
“… It works if you work it, so you have to kind of surrender to it,” Boyle said.
People experience relapses all the time, he said.
“We’re not toppled by relapses, but they come back. Our place is like an AA meeting. There are people there who are 20 years sober; people who are 20 minutes sober; and people who are drunk. So that’s the feel of the place,” Boyle said.
Getting people to stand in awe of what the poor have to carry rather than in judgment, leads to being able to say “we belong to each other and so how do you create a community of beloved belonging rather than us vs them, which never works to say nothing of the fact that it’s not true. There is no us and them. There’s just us,” he said.
During his remarks, he quoted the late Rep. John Lewis, R-Georgia, who said, “We all live in the same house.”
Boyle has been a Jesuit for 50 years and a priest for 38 of those years.
He earned a bachelor’s in English from Gonzaga University, a master’s degree in English from Loyola Marymount University and a master’s in theology from the Weston School of Theology in Cambridge, Mass.
Being educated by Jesuits is what made Boyle want to go into the ministry.
He found them hilarious, prophetic, fearless and joyful.
“I thought, well, I want they’re having,” Boyle said.
Boyle said he loved being in Odessa and being with Thompson and McIntosh.
“… They have been welcomed by OC and by this community so much that they’re kind of blown away by it. It’s wonderful to see them so exhilarated in the welcome they’ve received,” Boyle said.
During his remarks at the luncheon, Boyle described the Homeboys’ stories of neglect, abuse, torture, prison and prison time.
Boyle often brings the Homeboys with him when he speaks and gives them a chance to tell their stories to rooms full of people.
Thompson and McIntosh both said they enjoyed being in Odessa.
“I was skeptical because I’ve never been to Odessa. I’ve never even been in Texas. But I knew it was going to be something good and something fun and just the excitement of being somewhere new I’ve never been. It was a wonderful, good feeling. I was a little nervous, but it was a good feeling. And then when I got out here, I got treated with nothing but love. The love here, I love it,” Thompson said.
McIntosh said he loved the hospitality and the food.
“It’s warming. It’s a nice big family community. I like that,” McIntosh said.
