Father Greg Boyle has spent nearly four decades alongside gang members in Los Angeles, founding Homeboy Industries from the poorest parish in the city.

"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back to prison."

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Boyle reflects on what heals a life inside the world's largest gang-intervention program. Together they discuss tenderness as the highest form of spiritual maturity, kinship as the true goal (with peace and justice as byproducts), why "the poor evangelize you," why demonizing collapses on both political sides, and the mental-health roots of homelessness and gang life.

Episode Highlights

"The whole incarnation was necessary, not because of sin or salvation even. It's just, for me, it's God's love needed to become tender."

"I think that's the singular agenda item for our God is just to look at you and say, 'Ah, you're here.'"

"No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality. It's how it works."

"An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back to prison."

"There aren't good guys and bad guys, you know? And God doesn't see it that way, as hard as that is for us to conceive."

About Greg Boyle

Father Gregory Boyle, SJ, is an American Jesuit priest and the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world. A native Angeleno, he served as pastor of Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights from 1986 to 1992. In 2024 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, along with the California Peace Prize and Notre Dame's 2017 Laetare Medal. He is the bestselling author of Tattoos on the Heart, Barking to the Choir, The Whole Language, and Cherished Belonging. Learn more and follow at homeboyindustries.org and @homeboyindustries on Instagram.

Helpful Links and Resources

• Cherished Belonging (2024): https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Cherished-Belonging/Gregory-Boyle/9781668061855
• Tattoos on the Heart: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Tattoos-on-the-Heart/Gregory-Boyle/9781439153154
• Homeboy Industries: https://homeboyindustries.org
• Father Greg's bio: https://homeboyindustries.org/our-story/father-greg/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/homeboyindustries
• L'Arche International: https://www.larche.org

Show Notes

• Native Angeleno; Catholic, family-of-eight upbringing in Mid-Wilshire
• Why the Jesuits: hilarity, prophetic witness, anti-Vietnam protest
• "There is no difference actually between what God wants for you and what you most deeply want"
• Bolivia, 1984: liberation theology and the indigenous Jesuits
• "The poor evangelize you"
• Assigned to Dolores Mission—poorest parish in LA, highest concentration of gang activity
• "A vocation within a vocation within a vocation"
• The decade of death, 1988–98, and burying kids
• Birth of Homeboy: school, "felony-friendly" jobs, nine businesses
• "Nobody thinks anything up. You evolve."
• Tattoos on the Heart and the discipline of paying attention
• "I had been drowning in the shallow end of my own thoughts… Homeboy taught me to stand up"
• Tenderness as the highest form of spiritual maturity—L'Arche
• "God's love needed to become tender"—a different theology of incarnation
• "Ah, you're here"—the singular agenda item of God
• Kinship as God's dream; peace, justice, equality as byproducts
• "No kinship, no peace. No kinship, no justice. No kinship, no equality."
• "There aren't good guys and bad guys… God doesn't see it that way"
• Homelessness rooted in despair, trauma, mental illness
• "An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison, but a healed one won't ever go back"
• LA County Jail as the largest mental institution in the world
• Friendship as the secret diagnosis—and the primacy of relationship

#HomeboyIndustries #GregBoyle #ConversingPodcast #RadicalKinship #Tenderness #Compassion #FaithAndJustice #GangIntervention #Jesuit

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.