President’s Lecture Series – The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness
President's Ignatian Lecture with guest speaker Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ of Homeboy Industries

Event Phelan Chapel of the North American Martyrs

Please join Rev. John P. McGarry, SJ, for the 3rd Annual President’s Ignatian Lecture featuring speaker Fr. Greg Boyle, SJ.  We welcome you IN PERSON or VIA YOUTUBE LIVESTREAM.

Leading with heart -
How the transformative compassion of Homeboy Industries can inspire all of us to greater kindness, kinship, and love with all we encounter. 

A free lecture that is open to all. 

Thursday, February 17, 2022, at 7:30 pm in the Phelan Chapel of the North American Martyrs.

We will be offering both in-person and livestream options. All are welcome; however, RSVPs are required to attend this free event. 

RSVP/Watch

Attend in Person

RSVP to Attend in Person

You must RSVP to attend as we have a limited number of seats available. Masks must be worn inside and all campus protocols followed. Please do not attend if you are symptomatic or have tested positive for COVID.

Watch YouTube Livestream

Watch Livestream on YouTube

No RSVP is required to watch. The livestream will begin at 7:30 pm. It will be recorded and available to watch after the event passes.

 

About the Speaker

Fr. Gregory Boyle –- best known as Fr. Greg by all who meet him — is the beloved Jesuit priest and author of the inspirational bestsellers whose books and messages are rooted in his lifetime of experience counseling gang members in Los Angeles.

Gregory Boyle is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and re-entry program in the world.

Born and raised in Los Angeles and Jesuit priest, from 1986 to 1992 Father Boyle served as pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Boyle Heights. Dolores Mission was the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles that also had the highest concentration of gang activity in the city. 

Father Boyle witnessed the devastating impact of gang violence on his community during the so-called “decade of death” that began in the late 1980s and peaked at 1,000 gang-related killings in 1992. In the face of law enforcement tactics and criminal justice policies of suppression and mass incarceration as the means to end gang violence, he and parish and community members adopted what was a radical approach at the time: treat gang members as human beings. 

In 1988 they started what would eventually become Homeboy Industries, which employs and trains former gang members in a range of social enterprises, as well as provides critical services to thousands of men and women who walk through its doors every year seeking a better life. 

Father Boyle is the author of the 2010 New York Times-bestseller Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion. His second book, Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, was published in 2017. And his new and third book is The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness that will be out this Fall 2021.

He has received the California Peace Prize and been inducted into the California Hall of Fame. In 2014, President Obama named Father Boyle a Champion of Change.   He received the University of Notre Dame’s 2017 Laetare Medal, the oldest honor given to American Catholics. In 2020, he served as a committee member of California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Economic and Job Recovery Task Force as a response to COVID-19 crisis. In the same year, Homeboy Industries was the recipient of the 2020 Hilton Humanitarian Prize validating 32 years of Fr. Greg’s vision and work by the organization for over three decades.