ESCAPE FROM LA GANG LIFE Fr. Gregory Boyle (center), seen here with some of the Los Angeles youths whose lives have been transformed by Homeboy Industries, was recently in the country for a talk at the Ateneo de Manila University and a retreat in Silang, Cavite. —Photo from Homeboy Industries.
MANILA, Philippines— He had heard good things about the Philippines. But when Fr. Greg Boyle set foot in the country for the first time, it still struck him to see up close one particular aspect of Pinoy culture.
“No one does family and friends like the Filipinos,” said the 70-year-old American Jesuit. “My God! People are amazing. If you could bottle Filipinos and spread them all over the world, imagine what would happen.”
“People care for each other. They are other-centered and loving-centered. I’ve never … I’ve been all all over the place … I’ve never experienced people quite like the people here.”
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Starting with tattoos
For family ties and friendships—or their absence in the lives of the youth—underscore Boyle’s mission at Homeboy Industries, a nonprofit he founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1988.
Homeboy was part of the Jesuit community’s response to the escalating drug problem, teen alienation, and gang violence during a period he called “the decade of death” in the city. Boyle was then serving as the pastor of the Dolores Mission Church under the Diocese of Los Angeles.
The priest was in the country last week to deliver a talk at the Ateneo de Manila University and facilitate a three-day retreat in Silang, Cavite. The retreat was organized also by Ateneo, Integra Wellness Center, and social enterprise incubator xchange.
In an interview with the Inquirer in Makati City, Boyle shared how Homeboy had since helped more than 10,000 former gang members—both male and female—rebuild their lives.
“Our society wants gang members, criminals and drug addicts to measure up, but we want them to heal up first,” he said. “If they’re healed from their traumas, they can learn anything and they’ll be resilient to continue on those jobs that we trained them for.”
The healing can start in ways as simple as having gangland tattoos removed, while also tending to their inner psychic wounds through counseling and conversations on anger management.
If the “homies,” as he fondly called his wards, got into trouble with authorities, Homeboy also found ways to provide them with legal assistance.
Reentry process
From these initial interventions, the “reentry” process can advance through programs designed to let them somehow catch up on the learning years they missed.
They receive various forms of skills training, enough to make them employable—and ultimately reconnect them with family and community with clearer direction and renewed purpose.
“These people all need to excavate their wounds and let it air out to heal and close. We told our homies: ‘If you do not transform this pain, you will just keep inflicting it on other people,’” Boyle said.
There has been no single surefire formula; not a few of Boyle’s homies slipped back into old vices, rejoined gangs or, worse, ended up behind bars.
Reforming delinquents through mere suppression or incarceration, and without inner healing, can be both “shortsighted and demeaning,’’ he said.
Such a method “does not honor what [the youth] have suffered. These are wounded folks who faced a lot of terrible things when they were kids. Wounds should be healed, and not punished.”
The really “radical approach” is to treat everyone as human beings capable of change.
“The whole goal of this healing is to become a better person. This is about health and wellness. You do not moralize health. There are no good or bad people, only healthy and unhealthy people,” he added.
Worth $40M
While its accomplishments deal in intangibles, Homeboy Industries has grown in the last 37 years into a $40-million entity if measured by the 13 social enterprises it now supports to provide employment for former gang members. Located in Los Angeles, these include a bakery, a grocery store, a diner, a catering service, a silk screen printing and embroidery shop, and an electronics recycling center, among others.
In themselves, these enterprises expand the healing process to the community level. Making such an impact on thousands of lives in a single city, Homeboy is now considered one of the most successful youth intervention programs in the world.
“This healing is not really about making prisons nicer but making communities healthier. Because if a community is healthy, then prisons are obsolete, as kids will grow up healthy in a place that they cherish and love,” he added.
In May, Boyle was named one the 19 recipients of the 2024 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor conferred by the US government, for his work at Homeboy Industries.
Generational trauma
A book he authored and published in 2010, titled “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion,” made it to the New York Times bestseller list.
He currently serves on a US government advisory board on juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, and on a similar body in the LA-based Loyola Law School Center for Juvenile Law and Policy.
For Elaine Khan, founder of the Makati-based Integra Wellness Center, Homeboy’s mission aligns with the holistic approach embraced by her company, one of Boyle’s hosts during his Philippine trip.
“We believe that transforming individuals is the cornerstone of transforming communities, as personal change ripples outward, influencing families, neighborhoods, and society at large. As each individual finds healing for themselves, they bring that renewed energy into their interactions with others, disrupting the cycles of trauma and violence passed down through generations,” Kahn said.
Integra offers various services that promote physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being, including high-frequency lymphatic drainage, Ayurvedic therapies, and customized wellness plans, she added.
Youths losing their way because of drugs, peer pressure, family problems, and other factors are a concern in every country. But Boyle observed that “unlike other cultures, the Filipino culture is of loving that heals, loving that nurtures relationships.”
“That’s your superpower,’’ he said. “Everybody is attentive to everyone’s needs, everybody is letting love live through them. The solution to your healing is already in you, you just have to seek it.”