Jesuit priest Greg Boyle brings 'radical kinship' message to PH
MANILA, Philippines — Jesuit priest Greg Boyle, founder of Los Angeles-based Homeboy Industries, is back in the Philippines this week for a series of engagements on healing, second chances and what he describes as the need to build communities where nobody is treated as disposable.
Boyle, who has spent nearly four decades working with people affected by gang violence, incarceration, poverty and trauma, is in the country from September 8 to 13.
His Philippine visit includes a Manila engagement at Santuario de San Antonio Parish Center and a three-day retreat in Silang, Cavite, from September 11 to 13.
The retreat, titled "The Power of Radical Kinship," focuses on compassion, resilience and the idea of moving beyond simply helping people at the margins toward recognizing a shared humanity.
The visit builds on Boyle's first trip to the Philippines in 2024, when he spoke to Filipino audiences and led a retreat in Cavite.
From gang violence to Homeboy Industries
Boyle's work began in 1986, when he became pastor of Dolores Mission, then described by organizers as the poorest Catholic parish in Los Angeles and located in an area with a high concentration of gang activity.
Rather than beginning with an institution or formal program, Boyle spent time in the neighborhood, listening to young people and families whose lives were shaped by violence and poverty.
Two years later, Boyle and the Dolores Mission community began what would eventually become Homeboy Industries.
The early approach was straightforward: create jobs for former gang members when other employers would not hire them.
Over time, the program expanded beyond employment.
According to organizers of Boyle's Philippine visit, Homeboy Industries now serves more than 10,000 people each year and provides job training through 14 social enterprises, alongside mental health services, education, substance-use support, tattoo removal and housing assistance.
The organization has become known for treating employment not as a standalone solution, but as part of a broader effort to address trauma, social isolation and the barriers faced by people leaving gangs or returning from incarceration.
Boyle's work also rests on the idea that people are more than their worst decisions.
His approach emphasizes proximity: understanding what people have lived through before judging what they have done, and allowing programs to be shaped by the needs expressed by the people they serve.
Organizers said Homeboy's services developed in that way. Jobs were created because employment was needed. Therapeutic services became central as the effects of trauma became clearer. Tattoo removal was introduced when visible gang tattoos became barriers to work.
'Everybody Belongs'
That philosophy is at the center of Boyle's Philippine visit.
His Manila session, "Everybody Belongs: Finding Hope, Healing and Connection in a Divided World," was held September 10 at Santuario de San Antonio Parish Center.
His Sept. 11-13 retreat at Rosary Hills in Silang, Cavite, continues the same theme, asking participants to examine what changes when people stop dividing communities into those who belong and those who do not.
The retreat is framed around what Boyle calls "radical kinship," an approach that asks people not only to extend compassion to those at society's margins, but to dismantle the distinction between "us" and "them."
Boyle's work has received recognition in the United States. He received the University of Notre Dame's Laetare Medal in 2017 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2024.
But the message he is bringing back to the Philippines is rooted less in those honors than in the lessons he says he learned from decades spent alongside the people Homeboy Industries serves: that lasting change begins not simply with punishment, charity or intervention, but with people recovering a sense of dignity and belonging.
