Photo by Kathryne Pusch 

ATLANTA—“We’re called to take seriously what Jesus took seriously,” said Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, urging the students at Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School to prioritize the concerns of others, moving beyond self-absorption and judgment.  

Father Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang intervention program in the country, supporting former gang members through job training, therapy and community. 

The downtown Atlanta school hosted Father Boyle as the celebrant for its school Mass Jan. 16 honoring Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He was then a guest at a student-led conversation joined by former gang member Ronald Dennison. Father Boyle also spoke at St. Thomas More Church, Decatur, and at the Ignatius House Jesuit Retreat Center.  

To commemorate the Atlanta native son and slain civil rights leader, the Archdiocese of Atlanta hosted its annual observance during the holiday weekend with a Mass and youth program. Bishop John N. Tran was the homilist at the Mass Jan. 17 at Sts. Peter and Paul Church, Decatur. Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer, OFM Conv., celebrated the Mass, assisted by deacons, along with other priests.  

Speaking of King, Bishop Tran said, “He bore a powerful witness to the truth that laws and social structure must serve the common good and not perpetuate these discriminations, and that every human person is created in the likeness and image of God.” 

Ophelia Adje-Awuah of the Ghanaian Catholic Community in Atlanta served as a lector for annual archdiocesan Mass commemorating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This year’s Mass was at Sts. Peter and Paul Church. Photo by Kathryne Pusch

People of faith today must do the same, examining their hearts to ask, “Where do I still draw lines Jesus wants me to erase?” asked the bishop. 

“We all know that Dr. King was a great American leader, a man deeply shaped by the Gospel, shaped by the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, and from that Gospel he became a prophetic voice and a heroic witness to justice, nonviolence, and moral conscience for our nation—not only during his time but even for us today,” he said.  

Building kinship 

At the downtown school, Father Boyle urged the nearly 500-student school community to “rip the roof off” to break barriers of exclusion and judgement, building from St. Mark’s Gospel, where friends broke through a roof to lower a paralyzed man to Jesus. 

Boyle reminded them how Dr. King transformed the country through courage and creativity.  

“Don’t settle, as Martin Luther King didn’t, for standing outside the house and throwing up with your hands. If you can’t get in, rip the roof off. Jesus admires that,” he said.  

King’s message mirrored Jesus in calling people to cross lines that divide, he said. People must turn from judgment to “inclusion, nonviolence and unconditional loving kindness” to discover a person’s goodness and build kinship, he said.  

Patrick Lynch, the vice president of mission and identity at Cristo Rey, said Rev. King and Father Boyle are “committed to the same Gospel.”  

They both “challenge our society when we so easily cast people aside and fail to see how they are made in the image and likeness of God,” he said in an email.  

King and leaders at Homeboy Industries have the same understanding of Jesus’ vision for the world and how that could be applied in our society, he said.  

In the peak years of gang violence in the 1990s, Father Boyle said more than a thousand people a year were killed. After the 1992 Los Angeles riots, he began his first business, Homeboy Bakery, athis parish. Homeboy Industries now has more than a dozen “social enterprises” around Los Angeles, employing more than 500 men and women who want to leave the gang life. The former gang members participate in 18 months of counseling, job training and other steps to begin their next chapter.  

“The focus is healing,” said Father Boyle.  

Father Greg Boyle answered questions from Greyson Smith, a sophomore at Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School after his talk focused on Homeboy Industries, which the Jesuit priest started to combat gang violence in Los Angeles. The program commemorated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Photo by Andrew Nelson

Among his many civic recognitions, in 2017 Father Boyle received the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame for outstanding service to the Catholic Church and society and in 2024, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his work. 

Sitting alongside Father Boyle in the school gym, Dennison said he started in a gang at 13 and had served 15 years in jail. After his release, he felt more comfortable in his old neighborhood where he was the least judged, until rivals confronted him for something he had done 16 years earlier. 

As a young man, he realized his gang was the center of his life, but with maturity he realized he was living a lie.  

“I made the decision to hold myself accountable to love myself,” said Dennison. 

His past was never behind him, until he chose a new path.  

“It’s good to have somebody, not only somebody, but an organization that understands that we all have a past and then we all have a future as well. I want to get to my future, and I made the right decision. Life ain’t perfect. But you got the opportunity to make the right decision,” he said. 

Homeboy Industries acts as an embracing village, with case managers and peer counselors available around the clock to help its members.  

Boyle rejects the idea that any person can be thrown away, but all are precious, no matter what they’ve done. 

“Monsters don’t exist,” said the priest. “We belong to each other. We’re all human beings.”