Displaying items by tag: Claude Mosowik MSC

Vigil for the Homeless.  Reminder from Claude Mostowik MSC

Greg Boyle SJ

Claude Mostowik, MSC Justice and Peace Director has a notice for the homeless who have died and the visit of Fr Greg Boyle SJ. Greg Boyle has had a striking ministry – some details below.

There will be a vigil at Martin Place on Friday 21, 2024 for homeless people who have died in the last year. An Australian Tour by Father Greg Boyle, sj. He is founder of Homeboy Industries and author of Tattoos on the Heart, The Power of Boundless Compassion, The Whole Language: The Power of Extravagant Tenderness and Barking to the Choir. 

Gregory Joseph Boyle, S.J. (born May 19, 1954) is an American Catholic priest of the Jesuit order. He is the founder and director of Homeboy Industries, the world's largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program, and former pastor of Dolores Mission Church in Los Angeles.  He entered the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). Boyle was ordained a priest in 1984.

At the conclusion of his theology studies, Boyle spent a year living and working with Christian base communities in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Upon his return in 1986, he was appointed pastor of Dolores Mission Church, a Jesuit parish in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of East Los Angeles that was then the poorest Catholic church in the city. At the time, the church sat between two large public housing projects and amid the territories of eight gangs. Referred to as the "decade of death" in Los Angeles between 1988-1998, there were close to a thousand people per year killed in Los Angeles from gang related crime.

By 1988, in an effort to address the escalating problems and unmet needs of gang-involved youth, Boyle, alongside parish and community members, began to develop positive opportunities for them, including establishing an alternative school and a day care program, and seeking out legitimate employment, calling this initial effort Jobs for a Future.

Homeboy Industries is the largest and most successful gang rehabilitation and re-entry program in the world. Homeboy offers an "exit ramp" for those stuck in a cycle of violence and incarceration. The organization's holistic approach, with free services and programs, supports around 10,000 men and women a year as they work to overcome their pasts, re-imagine their futures, and break the inter-generational cycles of gang violence. Therapeutic and educational offerings (e.g., case management, counseling, and classes), practical services (e.g., tattoo removal, work readiness, and legal assistance), and job training-focused business (e.g., Homeboy Bakery, Homegirl Café, and Homeboy Silkscreen & Embroidery) provide healing alternatives to gang life while creating safer and healthier communities.

Los Angeles (May 4, 2024) – Homeboy Industries is proud to announce that its Founder, Father Gregory Boyle, S.J., received The Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. in a White House ceremony that took place on Friday, May 3^rd. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the United States’ highest civilian honor.

“This recognition is heartening because it honors the many thousands of men and women who have walked through our doors at Homeboy Industries since 1988,” said Father Gregory Boyle, S.J., Founder of Homeboy Industries. Adding that, “It acknowledges their dignity and nobility and the courage of their tenderness. It underscores for us all, the invitation to no longer punish wound, but seek its healing. It recognizes the need to invest in people and to create together a community of cherished belonging.”

Issues of this week, remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki - reflection by Claude Mostowik MSC

Andre Claessens MSC, General Councillor, writes: August 9^th we celebrate the memory of the Jewish Carmelite  Edith Stein or Saint Therese of the Cross (Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1942 – canonized in 1998 by S. John Paul II) 

and we commemorate also that on this day in 1943 the Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter was martyred for his refusals to participate in the unjust wars of Nazi Germany and to take an oath of loyalty Adolf Hitler. He was beatified as a martyr by Pope Benedict XVI in October 2007 in Linz. You can watch the movie about this testimony A hidden life (2019). Above all this day will be remembered because of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, as we remembered on August 6th “little boy” dropped on Hiroshima.

It is also a good opportunity to remember that the year 2023 marks the 60^th anniversary of the encyclical Pacem in Terris of S. John XXIII, written in 1963 in the context of the cold war. Since then all contemporary popes condemned the nuclear destruction power some nations built up.  Pope Francis reminds us frequently this condemnation of the nuclear armament.

Claude Mostowik MSC on Hiroshima Day August 6, 2023, Sydney Town Hall

For 78 years, the earth and its inhabitants have lived under the threat of nuclear destruction. Trillions of dollars have gone into their development and maintenance, while actual human needs of shelter, health care, food, and education are deeply underfunded.

Since its founding in 1945, Pax Christi has prioritised the work of nuclear disarmament and is member of the International Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons. Many Christian churches celebrate The Feast of the Transfiguration. The mountain top experience gave them a glimpse of Jesus that stretched their imaginations where they saw themselves as part of something bigger – to be courageous instruments of justice and compassion. On that mountain, they hear a voice that calls, ‘Listen to him (Jesus)!’ But the one who is transfigured on the mountain will soon be disfigured on the cross and points to the disfigured in the world. This feast also commemorates a disfiguration. As Jesus climbed the mountain, on this day pilots climbed into cockpits to kill 100’s of 1000’s of people. As we remember the mushroom-shaped cloud that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we keep killing our siblings and disfiguring the Earth.

The call to us is to listen. Who is listening the hibakusha? Who is listening to the many voices speaking against the evil of nuclear possessions, the manufacture of more lethal weapons, threats against nations, the abuse of power, everyday hatred, rivalry, violence, greed, bullying and disfiguring of peoples’ reputations? The call from the mountain is to proclaim peace by our lives, our actions, and words. We have a choice. Our every choice can be liberating or diminishing of others and our world..

The Transfiguration was a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. Hiroshima was a turning point in human history. Both involved light. One was the light of love, life and hope and the other a deadly light, the death of everything for generations, of mass murder and ongoing threat. Pope Francis (2019) asks ‘How can we propose peace if we constantly invoke the threat of nuclear war as a legitimate recourse for the resolution of conflicts?’ He has repeatedly said that the mere possession of nuclear weapons is immoral. They do not ensure stability and peace. They give a false sense of security sustained by mentality of fear and mistrust that poisons relationships between peoples and obstructing any possible form of real dialogue. But are we listening? Are we listening to the prophetic voices of the hibakusha survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who continue to serve as a warning to us and for coming generations?

We can counter hatred with love. Compassion, sharing, generosity, sobriety, and responsibility are for us the choices that nurture personal fraternity.

Western media often fail to report on the fears of billions of human beings around the world who want a just peace that includes a chance for sustainable development. Politicians and media try to justify the unjustifiable. They systematically whitewash their crimes by engaging in a form of totalitarian censorship and a vicious persecution of whistle-blowers who tell us about crimes committed in our name. Indeed, secrecy is an enabler of crime. That secrecy ignored the critical voices who then argued against the need to drop a bomb, or two, on Japanese cities that were already devastated by U.S. fire-bombings. That secrecy does not address the health impacts of the research, testing, and production of such weapons, which still cause disease and death as victims of nuclear weapons’ development as were the people impacted by the fallout from U.S. nuclear testing in the Western United States and the Marshall Islands in the Western Pacific, uranium miners on First Nations lands, and many others.

Let’s work for the elimination of these weapons. The threat of nuclear war has not gone away. We learn today that it is possible to see things differently and act differently. It is possible to recognise the sacredness and dignity in each other. It is possible that we can live together in our diversity, to work for peace at home and abroad, to let go of racism and hatred for homosexuals and gender diverse people, to let go of greed, power, to let go of the need to control, to give up violence in word and action, to let go of fear that leads to paralysis and inaction.

Fr. Claude Mostowik msc, President, Pax Christi Australia