Gregory Boyle

Wednesday was as dark a day as I can recall. We six Jesuits who live here were glued to the TV. It was just dark. We had isolated lootings in our community. Thursday afternoon, as I rode my bike around the projects, I knew kids were arming themselves. I had gotten two tips from Latino gangs saying, "It's going to come here." There are moments here when I push all my chips to the center of the table and say, "Here is what I've done for you, and here is what I am going to ask of you."

The priest, affectionately known to the three young boys as "G," made them an offer. "Graduate from high school without joining the neighborhood gang and I'll send you on a vacation anywhere you want to go in the United States," he told them. The boys, growing up in the Pico-Aliso housing project in Boyle Heights, knew of a place they'd like to go. "Even Hawaii, G?" they asked the priest. "Even Hawaii."

A repeated denial by Jesuit officials to return Father Greg Boyle to the Dolores Mission parish has not dampened the efforts of many Pico-Aliso community residents, who have continued to rally for the return of the man they call "G-Dog." At a Feb. 21 meeting with Father Paul Belcher, head of California's Jesuit order, 40 of the more than 100 community residents and friends who crowded the Dolores Mission School's cafeteria pleaded with Belcher to reassign Boyle to the community.

When the three Boyle Heights boys walked the stage in their caps and gowns in June, they'd kept their end of the bargain: graduating from Roosevelt High School without joining a gang. But the priest in the audience, who four years ago promised them a vacation to Hawaii if they succeeded, didn't know how he would pay up. Now he knows.

Father Gregory Boyle's success among the "home boys" of Boyle Heights was that he saw right through the tattooed skins and outward toughness to the spark of spirituality beneath the surface. WILLIAM H. HENSEY JR. Mexican American Opportunity Foundation City of Commerce

I should have known better than to try to interview Father Gregory Boyle on his home turf, at the Homegirl Café in the Homeboy Industries building on the edge of Chinatown. It was like trying to interview Elvis in the lobby of the Flamingo Hotel. Old ladies, homeboys, artists, a City Council member -- everybody wanted to say hi to the man who, from nothing -- less than nothing, which is to say, derision and debt and doubt -- crafted what is now the biggest gang "exit" program in the country.

Father Gregory Boyle is many things to many people, but he's perhaps best known as the founder of L.A.'s own Homeboy Industries, the largest gang-intervention program in the country. Over the last two decades, the Jesuit priest and native Angeleno has worked to provide former gang members and at-risk youths a way out, according to his motto, "Jobs not jails. " Freida Lee Mock's new documentary portrait of Boyle, "G-Dog," takes its title from Boyle's local nickname and follows him and as he tries to keep Homeboy afloat during a period of economic hardship.

Church and state Re "An unapologetic Catholic voice," April 12 I began reading the article on Archbishop Jose Gomez with admiration, but ended in horror. Gomez has taken admirable positions in favor of some human rights. But then he endorsed a federal constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage and "assailed President Obama's healthcare reform package, largely because he felt it would increase the number of abortions" -- mistakenly, I believe. But this is merely Catholic orthodoxy.