Archive for the ‘NJN Video’ Category

In 1969, Jesuit Brother Jim Small came to Loyola Academy in Chicago’s northern suburb of Wilmette, Ill. to work as its resident carpenter, but it’s been a different kind of work and use of his talents that has benefited the Jesuit college preparatory high school the most.

After serving in the Navy during World War II followed by a stint as a Chicago police officer, Br. Small entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1952 at Milford, Ohio. When he came to Loyola Academy, Br. Small picked up a paintbrush and returned to a hobby he’d enjoyed since his childhood – painting. During the school’s first fundraiser in 1970, Br. Small included 36 of his original pieces, all of which were quickly purchased. Since then, he contributes between 60 to 100 paintings each year to Loyola Academy’s fundraiser and raises upwards of $45,000 annually for the school. The funds from the sale of his artwork are used to endow a scholarship fund for students in need.

While Br. Small’s work as a carpenter and an artist has done much for Loyola Academy, few would say those are his most important contributions. He’s known by students, alumni, staff, parents and coaches as a true man for others – someone with a generous spirit who humbly attributes his abilities to God’s grace.  It is his generosity that most would say is his great contribution to Loyola Academy.

Find out more about Br. Jim Small and his artistic talents in the Ignatian News Network video below:

With the motto, “nothing stops a bullet like a job,” Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles works to help gang members leave their lives formed on the streets and in prisons and instead learn skills to improve their lives. Offering tattoo removal, counseling former “homies” in drug rehabilitation and mental health, and even providing jobs in its bakery, café and t-shirt store, Homeboy Industries is a haven for former gang members looking to turn their lives around. The ministry helps approximately 12,000 individuals each year learn life skills to lead them away from the streets.

Founded in 1992 by charismatic Jesuit Father Greg Boyle during the height of the city’s gang wars, Homeboy Industries has become a model program that other cities, like Chattanooga, are trying to replicate.

Fr. Boyle’s innovative program was featured recently in a piece by The Economist. An excerpt appears below and you can read the full story on The Economist’s website.

It can take between three and 40 treatments to remove a prison tattoo, says Troy, a volunteer doctor at Homeboy Industries in central Los Angeles, as another former gang member takes a seat. Troy zaps the tattoos with a laser, breaking up the ink so that the immune system can destroy it. This is painful, and the laser’s sharp cracking sound reminds some patients of shooting or of the prison yard, explains Andre, who is 27, spent seven years in prison, and got his first tattoo when he was 11. But it is still good to get rid of tattoos. “We focus on the visible ones,” says Troy, “the ones that make you a target when you’re walking decades later with your son and somebody shoots you, or the ones that prevent you from getting a job.”

“We’re a trauma-informed family here,” says Jesuit Father Greg Boyle. Eventually, they experience an unfamiliar feeling that he calls the “no-matter-whatness”. They realize that the staff do not judge their past but are ready to help them build a better future.

Homeboy Industries also recently opened a new diner in Los Angeles’ City Hall. You can find out more about Homeboy Diner in this Ignatian News Network video:

A native of Sacramento, Jesuit Father Scott Santarosa, experienced the Jesuits at an early age, first as a high school student at Jesuit High School in Sacramento. Fr. Santarosa credits the care and attention of the Jesuits and lay faculty of Jesuit High in moving him to continue his Jesuit education at Santa Clara University, where he graduated in Civil Engineering in 1988.

Still not having enough of the “Jesuit thing,” he decided to do a year of volunteer work with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, where he ran an after-school program for youth in Newark, New Jersey. Following his year as a Jesuit volunteer, he went one step further, and joined the Jesuits in the summer of 1989.

His Jesuit life has taken him to the Bronx, New York for philosophy studies; Bellarmine College Prep in San Jose for three years of teaching; Berkeley and Mexico City for theology studies and pastoral ministry. Currently, Santarosa is the pastor at Dolores Mission parish, a small but vibrant Jesuit parish in the lowest income section of Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. He served there as a newly ordained priest back in 2000 where the good parishioners there taught him how to be a priest. His time there planted the seed of desire to do parish work, so he is happy to be there now full-time, doing pastoral work, much of it in Spanish. He feels humbled and grateful to see God in the people of that community.

Ignatian News Network met up with Fr. Santarosa to learn more about the man behind the collar.

Jesuit Father Roc O’Connor has been a member of the Society of Jesus since 1967. For more than 25 years of those years, he has planned, performed and written liturgical music. Fr. O’Connor was a part of the St. Louis Jesuits, considered by many to be the fathers of contemporary American liturgical music. Along with the other members, he received four Grammy nominations in late 1970s. Today, O’Connor teaches theology at Creighton University and consults on liturgical matters for St. John’s parish in Omaha, Neb.

In this video piece below, O’Connor discusses his own vocation path and how music has become instrumental in his life as a Jesuit.

Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno is the curator of meteorites at the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo, the Papal summer residence.  His research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system. Prior the joining the Jesuits, he obtained his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Earth and Planetary Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a PhD in Planetary Science from the University of Arizona.

After speaking at the Jesuit Brothers Institute on Jesuits in the Sciences, Br. Consolmagno took some time out to sit down with National Jesuit News and share the story of his vocation: