Quotes from Greg Boyle

Delegations from all over the world visit Homeboy Industries and scratch their heads as we tell them of our difficulty in placing our people in jobs after their time with us. Americans' seeming refusal to believe in a person's ability to redeem himself strikes these folks as foreign indeed.

Showing up in the lives of children is everything.

I don't believe in mistakes. Everything belongs, and, as the homies say, 'It's all good.'

I didn't take my vows to the LAPD.

Ours is a God who waits. So who are we not to?

I don't save people. God saves people. I can point them in the right direction. I can say, 'There's that door. I think if you walked through it, you'd be happier than you are.'

I spent the summers of 1984 and 1985 as an associate pastor at Dolores Mission Church, the poorest parish in the Los Angeles archdiocese. In 1986, I became pastor of the church.

Me wanting a gang member to have a different life would never be the same as that gang member wanting to have one.

I know now that gang warfare is not the Middle East or Northern Ireland. There is violence in gang violence, but there is no conflict. It is not 'about something.' It is the language of the despondent and traumatized.

We need not wait for further, well-placed home video cameras to see that low-intensity warfare is being waged against low-income minorities. We need only listen to the voices of the poor; they can testify that they are dehumanized, disparaged, and despised by the police.

The business of second chances is everybody's business.

I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.

You don't really get Jesus saying very often there'll be pie in the sky when you die. He's really talking about now and today, and it's supposed to be like that. You're supposed to delight in what's right in front of you.

We can't get at crime unless we know what language it speaks. Otherwise, we are just suppressing the cough, not curing the disease.

We lose our right to be surprised that California has the highest recidivism rate in the country if we refuse to hire folks who have taken responsibility for their crimes and have done their time.

God can get tiny, if we're not careful.

God is compassion.

People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.

If the Los Angeles Police Department had enough officers, it could focus on one part of the community and stay there long enough to know and respect the people the officers are called on to protect and serve.

The church needs a pope who can call us to conversion and lead us to take seriously what Jesus did.

We can't just settle for the low bar of pope as media-savvy, canny Curia manager.

The wrong idea has taken root in the world. And the idea is this: there just might be lives out there that matter less than other lives.

Metro police can't infuse hope into those for whom hope is foreign. The algorithm does not exist that can heal the traumatized. Data-driven predictions won't result in the delivery of mental health services.

If you are paying attention, then the day is going to be pretty joyful, and a lot of delight will fill it.