MILTON -- Students at Fontbonne, an all-girls Catholic school in Milton heard a moving message of hope, kinship, and what it means to serve those often considered to be on the margins of society on Oct. 17. Jesuit Father Greg Boyle, the founder of Los Angeles-based Homeboy Industries, and two "homeys" -- former gang members who now work for the organization -- spoke about the work they do to minister and provide opportunities to men and women who were formerly incarcerated or involved in gangs.

"This is what it means to adhere to the moral of the Gospel," Father Boyle told the several hundred students gathered in the school's auditorium. "You will stand with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless, and you will stand with those who are demonized so the demonizing will stop and with the disposable so the time will come when we stop throwing people away."

Fontbonne Head of School Maura Spignesi said her students strive to fulfill the meaning and message of Father Boyle's life's work in their own lives.

"He shared a powerful message about the importance of rehabilitation, and here at Fontbonne we are grounded in the Catholic social justice teachings, and we are committed to helping our students understand what it means to lead with purpose and compassion," she said.

Father Boyle began his unique ministry in 1988 when he was assigned to Dolores Mission Church in East Los Angeles, located between two public housing projects plagued by violence from eight warring street gangs. Seeking to address shootings occurring nearly every day, Father Boyle began approaching gang members, who had been thrown out of the schools they were in, and offering them another chance for education. When he found that no existing schools would take them, he converted a convent into a school for them.

At first, there were brawls every day between students and a high staff turnover (including one principal who didn't come back after his first day and changed his phone number so he couldn't be found). But Father Boyle persevered and eventually put the feuding gang members to work together on maintenance, landscaping, and construction crews.

Father Boyle knew they were on the right track when Los Angeles erupted in rioting after the 1992 verdicts that acquitted white police officers in the beating of Rodney King, a Black man.

"Every pocket of poverty exploded except the poorest pocket, my parish," Father Boyle said. When the Los Angeles Times asked why that was, he answered, "we had 60 rival gang members who had a reason to get up every morning."

The next step was the evolution of that idea into Homeboy Industries, which trains former inmates and gang members for a variety of administrative and vocational jobs. Many of the students work at one of several "social enterprise" storefronts or businesses that Homeboy operates, including a bakery, café, diner, silk-screening, dog grooming, and electronics recycling, among others. For many Homeboy members, the jobs are the first legitimate employment they've ever held. Today, Homeboy Industries is the largest gang-intervention organization in the world, providing free education, job training, and counseling and therapy services.

"Now, 10,000 people a year walk through our doors at our headquarters in Chinatown," Father Boyle said. Many of those people are trapped by "a wall of shame and disgrace" because of their life choices up to that point, he said.

"The only thing that can scale that wall is tenderness," Father Boyle told the students. "We created a place where they can be seen and cherished. They all say the same thing, 'we are used to being watched but we're not used to being seen.' At Homeboy Industries, we are allergic to the idea of holding up a standard and asking people to measure up. Instead, we hold the mirror up and say, 'you are exactly what God envisioned when he made you.'"

Father Boyle was joined at Fontbonne by two Homeboy members, David Herrera, 23, who first joined a gang at age 13, and Govanny Abril, 34, who spent 20 years in a gang and served seven years in prison.

Herrera told the assembly that he started going to Homeboy after he had a son when he was 17. "I'm still getting taught how to be a parent, my skills and communication," he said. "I'm so grateful to be here."

Abril, who also has a young son, said when he got out of prison, he struggled to adjust to life on the outside. He heard about Father Boyle's operation but refused to go. Finally, he said, "something told me in my heart to go to Homeboys, and when I went, I never left."

"I still strive for a better tomorrow every day of my life," Abril said. "Whatever you feel inside, eventually you have to give in, you have to let go . . . At the end of the day, it comes down to one thing, and that's the human race. There is help out there."

Father Boyle closed his remarks as he began, reminding the students, as they go through their lives, to be practitioners of "tenderness" to, and seekers of "kinship" with, those who are broken and wounded.

"There's no us and them," he said. "Just us. And that's the only praise ... God has any interest in."

And if the wider world dismisses the value and worth of that calling, as it might, he told the students to ignore critics and doubters and not become discouraged. Rather, he urged them to remember a passage from the Old Testament Book of Jeremiah: "In this place of which you say, 'it is a waste,' there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness ... the voices of those who sing."