Quotes from Greg Boyle

Does God feel like that same-sex marriage could happen? I don't think anybody who has a connection to God and God's understanding and depth of compassion who's gonna say 'no.'

The task of dealing comprehensively with gangs belongs to the city, not to law enforcement.

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.

I'm the priest who has been mistaken for an ATM machine.

We need the disruption of categories that lead us to abandon the difficult, the disagreeable, and the least likely to go very far.

My church is in the detention facilities where I preside and celebrate the Eucharist. To me that's the church. That's the people of God.

I feel called to be faithful.

Our best selves tell us that 'there but for the grace of God... ' and that, in the end, there is no distance, really, between us and them. It is just us. Our best and noble hope is to imitate the God we believe in. The God who has abundant room in God's grief and heart for us all.

For over twenty years, Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with those on the margins and those whose burdens are more than they can bear; it stands with the poor and the powerless, with the easily-despised and the readily-left out.

I have a lot of people in my life, and I think there's something key: the thing that leads to intimacy and relationship and connection is tenderness.

We need a pope to usher in a new era of inclusion, the end of a sinful clericalism, and a strong sense of duty to those on society's margins. The 1 billion faithful long for a leader who is fearless and driven - not by terror but by love.

Gang members aren't frightened into acceptable behavior by increased penalties, enhanced punishments, and the promise of new detention facilities.

No kid is seeking anything when he joins a gang; he's always fleeing something. He's not being pulled; he's being pushed by the circumstances in which he finds himself.

What is ultimately compelling for our children in helping them conjure images of a future for themselves is our willingness to walk with them as they do it.

Gangs are born of a lethal absence of hope, and hope has an address: 130 W. Bruno St. in Los Angeles, CA 90012.

Homeboy Bakery is an alternative to kids who have found themselves, regrettably, in gangs and want to redirect their lives.

In my barrio, jobs work and money saves lives. When I have had the funds to place a gang member on a job site and pay his salary, I've seen him stop banging. When, on the rarest of occasions, an employer has offered a job to one of these youth, I've witnessed kids suddenly have a reason to get up in the morning.

Richard Rohr is a theologian that I read.

Reactive and proactive policing are both necessary. Still, we need to lower expectations that such efforts can ever be responsive to crime.

The poor evangelize you about what's important and what is the Gospel, and that that's where the joy is.

Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with the 'demonized' so that the demonizing will stop; it stands with the 'disposable' so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away.

The mark of our society as civilized will come when we embrace confidence in the power of redemption.

Redemption is possible, and it is the measure of a civilized society.

I think that any program that's born from below rather than on high is going to survive.