This year’s Brother Sullivan Lecture Series event hit on themes of healing and boundless compassion
Father Gregory Boyle, founder of the world’s largest gang-intervention and rehabilitation program, delivered the St. John’s Prep Brother Robert J. Sullivan, C.F.X. Lecture Series address last Thursday evening. In keeping with the Prep’s commitment to cultivate globally minded engagement and vision among young people, Boyle was making his second appearance as the series’ keynote speaker—this time inside the Dianne and Ray Carey ’67 Field House in the Leo and Joan Mahoney Wellness Center on campus—after conducting a virtual visit during the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2021.
A native of Los Angeles and a Jesuit priest, Boyle and parish members at his church started what is now Homeboy Industries in 1988. The organization employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, and provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life. Global Homeboy Networks now works with more than 400 organizations and programs across the United States and around the world, all modeled on Boyle’s founding concept.
The Brother Sullivan Lecture Series brings innovators and leaders to St. John’s to explore how an ethics-based education can shape decision-making in the real world. But Boyle makes clear that the genesis of his remarkable mission was not part of any plan.
He served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights during the 1980s and ’90s. Based in the poorest Catholic parish in LA—also home to the highest concentration of gang activity in the city—Boyle was a firsthand witness to the devastating impact of gang violence on his community. He and parishioners simply chose to respond.
“For Homeboy Industries, it was never about 'taking off,' it was always about reacting to what was around us,” said Boyle. “Gang violence is an illness that comes from a lethal lack of hope. How do we give hope to those who feel like hope is foreign?”
Boyle authored the 2010 New York Times-bestseller “Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion.” The book was the summer 2020 community read for Grades 9 through 12 at St. John’s. The winner of the James Beard Humanitarian of the Year award in 2016, Boyle published a second book, “Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship,” in 2017.
A prominent theme drawn out in his address was two of his core beliefs, that he asserts will let us see the “horizon above the impasse of the current day.”
“First, everybody is unshakeably good,” he said. “And two, we all belong to one another.”
For his part, Head of School Ed Hardiman highlighted the importance of having speakers like Boyle come to campus as a window into new experiences, mindsets, and beliefs.
“Welcoming speakers like Father Boyle to campus is central to our mission of educating the whole person,” said Head of School Ed Hardiman. “The Brother Sullivan Lecture Series invites our school and greater community to reflect on what it means to see the dignity of every person, strive for excellence, and live as expressions of God’s love in the world.”
MEETING OF THE MINDS
Earlier in the day, Boyle met with faculty and staff as part of a special afternoon session at the A.E. Studzinski Library for a conversation about his newest book, "Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times." Discussion toggled between the faculty asking questions of Boyle and his Homies, Govanny Abril and David Herrera, and Boyle and his homies asking questions of the faculty.
“When I first came to this place, it was like seeing Hogwarts,” Abril said. “I saw a place of opportunity for these kids that I felt were like me.”
David and Govanny, both recent fathers, expressed that the sense of community they felt on campus was something they wished for their own boys.
Boyle offered to the faculty his thesis for the new book. “We have troubling naming things, and it’s consequential,” adding that “we call things morality and we can shake our fists at things but when you boil it down to its essentials, it's a problem of health, not good or evil. I think there’s a lot of health issues, mental and physical, that affect a person’s ability to see their own inherent goodness.”
Father Boyle has now joined an impressive group of accomplished professionals and dignitaries to appear as part of St. John’s lecture series, including former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, NCAA All-American and U.S. Olympic Team wrestler, Joe Heskett, and esteemed violinist and social justice advocate Vijay Gupta, a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellow.
Other guest lecturers on campus during the past decade include Vice Admiral Richard Brown (Ret) ’81, commander of all U.S. Naval Surface Forces, ALS advocate Nancy Frates P’03 ’06, Boston College football head coach Bill O’Brien ’88, and author, Opinion Columnist, and Commentator David Brooks.
Photos from Fr. Boyle's Day on Campus
Founded on the Xaverian values of compassion, humility, simplicity, trust and zeal, St. John’s educates students from 90 communities to be, do, and stand for good in the world. To learn more, visit www.stjohnsprep.org.