The Rev. Gary Smith worked with several young students at Kakuma Refugee camp, including Luul, a Muslim from Somalia. Photo courtesy Jesuit Refugee Service.

Jesuit Father Gary Smith has dedicated more than 50 years of his life to serving the poor, including the last dozen in African refugee camps in Uganda, South Africa and Kenya. He says that working with the poor in U.S. cities, such as Portland, Tacoma and Oakland, prepared him for his work with the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) in Africa.

“It gave me a viewpoint of how the church had moved toward the poor. All the personalities you find on the streets prepare you for all the personalities you find in the camps. Human beings are human beings,” Fr. Smith says.

Now back in the states, Fr. Smith recently spoke with The Oregonian about why he’s drawn to Africa: “There are the poor and there are the poor. My experience in the refugee camp is that people there have no address, no money, no documents. The degree of poverty is very different.”

Fr. Smith also discussed working with refugees from other faiths.  He said working with Muslims was not difficult. “They believe in the absolute, the creator. They want help discerning how God is moving in their lives,” he says. “They saw me as a father, someone who wanted to listen to them very attentively. These students knew the Quran, and they rejected extremists out of hand.”

Fr. Smith also spent time helping refugee students work on an online diploma program through Jesuit Commons: Higher Education at the Margins, which is run by Jesuit universities and JRS.  “When you work with really bright refugees who want nothing more than to be a man and a woman for others, there is a great sense of accomplishment in that,” Fr. Smith says.

To read the complete interview with Fr. Smith, visit The Oregonian website.

Homeboy Industries helps former gang members learn skills to better their lives and provides jobs in its bakery, café and t-shirt store.

“G-DOG” was directed by Academy Award-winning documentarian Freida Mock and had its U.S. debut this past June at the Los Angeles Film Festival.

Mock says she was inspired to make the film after seeing Fr. Boyle’s book “Tattoos on the Heart.” She remembers thinking, “A priest, kids, gangs and love? What’s this all about?”

The film, which is slated for theatrical release next year, introduces audiences to Fr. Boyle and the homies he helps. It also depicts a tough year for Homeboy Industries, with the possibility that the businesses will have to close because of challenging economic times.

Variety’s review said, “In an era with a paucity of real heroes, a genuine one emerges in “G-Dog”: the inexhaustible Jesuit priest Greg Boyle, whose Homeboy Industries has saved countless lives in Los Angeles’ gang-plagued neighborhoods.”

For more, visit the film’s website, www.gdogthemovie.com, where you can meet the cast and view clips.

This tradition is how Wisconsin Province Jesuit Jeff Dorr, a scholastic in First Studies, found himself with $35, a one-way bus ticket and an order to be home for dinner at 4:00 p.m., exactly 30 days later.

Dorr took the bus from Detroit to Atlanta. From there he planned to walk 20 miles to a Trappist monastery to spend his pilgrimage in prayerful solitude.

But within minutes, his plan changed. The first person he stopped to ask for directions had just gotten out of prison. They talked for a few minutes, and Dorr was so moved that he gave the man $10 for train fare. Next, he met a homeless man, and Dorr gave him the remainder of his money so he could eat.

“I realized that I felt drawn to a new focus,” Dorr said. “I knew what homeless people looked like and sounded like, but I never knew experientially what it meant to be homeless. I thought maybe that’s where this should go. Something of that experience of being on the street and being without was what I was meant to be doing.”

Dorr spent 18 nights at a homeless shelter, where he met dozens of people who shared their stories with him.

“One thing I gained from the shelter was a whole new appreciation for who ends up there,” said Dorr. He found that while many shelter residents have addiction or mental health issues, others are people who had houses and jobs and then something went wrong, like a divorce.

“The point of the pilgrimage is to spend the month letting go of our typical securities of home, money, community, and in doing that, come to trust more fully in God,” he said. “I realized how blessed I am, and that no matter what I do, I can’t experience life on the streets the way these guys do. It changed the outlook I had of what I was striving for and what God was calling me to. His message to me was to be with them, but you can’t be them.”

Read more of Dorr’s pilgrimage experience at Xavier Magazine.

In 1972, Jesuit Father John Baumann started a small training institute with the goal of supporting neighborhood organizations in California. What eventually came from this idea was the Pacific Institute for Community Organizations, now known as the PICO National Network. And, his desire to help local organizations has grown to a national outreach program, which has helped more than a million families and 1,000 congregations from 40 religious denominations. PICO has successfully worked to increase access to healthcare, improve public schools, make neighborhoods safer, build affordable housing and redevelop communities. Because of his work on problems facing urban, suburban and rural communities, Fr. Baumann sat down with the National Catholic Reporter to share his perspective on the U.S. economy today.

NCR: From your long-term perspective, what do you make of all that’s going on in the U.S. today regarding economic disparity, Occupy movements, etc.?

Baumann: I’d say that many Americans believe that the American Dream, also known as “America is the land of opportunity,” was once true, but it doesn’t hold anymore. Every previous generation has really known America as the land of opportunity, where children were expected to do as well or better than their parents. Yet, today we find our nation in a crisis, with record levels of poverty, the rising inequality and worsening predictions for our children’s future.

What is really troubling to me is this whole gap between the rich and the poor that has been growing over the past 20 years or more. It’s not an aberration; it’s a result of deliberate choices. It seems like that over the last 40 years, a series of economic choices have really redistributed the income upwards and as a result of that, it provided less and less opportunities to everyone else. All this has led to the financial stress on our families, and really it’s something that hasn’t been seen since the Great Depression.

When you started PICO years ago, did you ever imagine that this discussion of income inequality would be happening today?

When I started PICO, then, as now, I saw organizing as a way of responding to people’s pain. Organizing was a means of giving people an opportunity to express their values and their faith by forming faith-based organizations that gave them power to act, to bring about change so that their families would have a better quality of life. Today, organizing continues to respond to people’s pain, especially what we’re discussing — the results of inequality and class warfare. People want to make a difference. I often thought that if our elected officials were doing their job, responding to the needs of people, there’d be no need for organizing. Organizers would be out of a job. We really expect a government that works for everyone, not just for the powerful. So today I would say faith-based organizing is needed more than ever. People want to make a difference. They want their children to do as well as or better than their parents.

Are you happy with today’s discussion, that people are discussing it more in everyday conversation?

Again, it demonstrates to me the need for faith-based organizing. The faith community has a pivotal role for people to express their faith through action. The people, I believe, were inspired by their faith to seek, to unify people to reduce poverty, to bring about justice. Again, it’s about taking our faith into action, and it’s about challenging our elected leaders to put first the needs of families and the common good of our nation. People want to remake America into a land of opportunity for all people. I think this discussion continually highlights the importance of people uniting and coming together. And really, what all this means is people want a fair tax code that insists everyone pay their fair share, people want an increased access to health care, they want to end the foreclosure and underwater mortgage crisis, comprehensive immigration reform policy with a path to citizenship, strong federal action, I believe, to end the mass incarceration of people of color — these are things that people just have always wanted. They have wanted a better quality of life for their families.

What is your assessment of what is happening with all these protests and speaking out: Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

I’m thinking in terms of the fact that I’m a clergyperson, and think in terms of and also the role of clergy that play such an important role in faith-based organizing. It seems to me that many Americans long for a stronger moral leadership from churches and clergy regarding what’s going on in our country, especially the economic problems. I’d like to think of it in terms of just as God called the ancient prophets in our scriptures to condemn injustices, I think we, too, as clergy and through our community organizations must speak out when we see the unchecked greed of wealthy elites and the corrupting influences of powerful special interests. I think it’s important that we speak out, not only as clergy but through our faith-based organizing that we speak out.

Do you think the clergy are doing that today?

Through PICO we’re making a strong effort to reach out to clergy across our network to do this. We have actually put that in motion, to give clergy an opportunity to sign onto what we’re calling a prophetic voice for our country. If you go to our website, there’s the statement that clergy have put together that we’re anticipating getting 20,000 signatures to this prophetic voice statement, a call to action as we’re calling it.

Any other comments?

I keep getting back to, again, many Americans believe that the American Dream, which is “America is the land of opportunity,” that was once held true doesn’t anymore. And that it’s very important that we don’t sit back. We need to speak out and do something about it.

[PICO Network]

The Urban Plunge is a credit course offered to any student at Notre Dame by the Social Concerns Department. Its purpose is to demonstrate the problems of homelessness and poverty in the inner city. The core of the program is a 48 hour “urban plunge” during the Christmas vacation at a city near the student’s home. This plunge is preceded by several class periods and readings, and followed by another class period and a final paper.

Fr. Kammer’s lecture to the students, titled “Building Justice in the Cities,” addressed breaking the cycle of urban poverty. Kammer is currently is the executive director of the Jesuit Social Research Institute and has worked as the president of Catholic Charities USA.

“Making the invisible visible is the first step to compassion,” Kammer said. “Standing with the poor is a touchstone that gives us a wisdom that comes from the poor themselves and leads us to make judgments in favor of the poor.”

Kammer said taking a stand with the poor challenges our society’s dominant views.

“Standing with those who are poor introduces us to a new way of seeing the world around us,” he said. “This insistence on personal contact runs against our culture’s proclivity to see the poor as invisible or faceless.”

Kammer said once people make an initial commitment to stand with the poor, they might change the way they live their own lives.

“One of the first reactions that people have is to adopt a simpler lifestyle,” he said. “This choice is a stance appropriate to students.  Individuals who stand with the poor also stand with them in their career choices whether by choosing to teach in inner-city schools instead of the suburbs or doing social work in place of commercial law.

You can read more about Kammer’s lecture and the Urban Plunge program via this article in the university’s Observer newspaper. Kammer’s lecture can be found on video at Notre Dame’s Center for Social Concern’s website here.

With the assistance of a translator, Fr. Cardenal explained to a packed audience at Boston College that his time spent living in one of the poorest neighborhoods in the Colombian city informed his entire life’s work as a Jesuit and political leader in his native Nicaragua.

Among his neighbors was a family with seven children, whom Cardenal referred to as his “little bodyguards” because they were always following him around. One time, when he returned to his Jesuit residence, Cardenal walked in to find the children eating the Jesuits’ garbage. He described the emotional impact this moment had on him. Cardenal said, “That was a big hit for me. I loved them. You can’t imagine what that did for me.”

He continued, “Many times, the only thing these children had to eat was a roll made from corn and hot water with brown sugar added to it. My neighborhood was like a big lake, and we were all under the water of suffering. Often, I didn’t want to leave the house. The people were always suffering and without hope. When I walked down the street, I kept repeating to myself, ‘Unbearable. Unbearable. Unbearable.’”

Cardenal realized, “I cannot accept that people live this way. As a human being and as a Christian, I cannot accept it. It has to change.”

Upon returning to Nicaragua, the Jesuit continued to work for justice. His first assignment was as the vice-provost for students at the Nicaraguan Jesuit University, where his friend was the university’s president. “I had great admiration for him. He was charismatic and extraordinary,” Cardenal said.

However, on his third day at the job, a student movement erupted on campus because the president, Cardenal’sfriend, refused multiple requests from student leaders for a meeting. “The students requested three things,” he said. “First, they demanded a dialogue with the president. Second, they wanted a reform of the university’s regulations, which were put in place when the school was still very small. And third, they wanted to participate in the arenas and direction of the university.”

Much to his surprise, the students asked Cardenal to speak at their big rally in the school’s gymnasium. “At first, I didn’t want to speak, but I couldn’t say no,” he said. “I wondered, ‘What do I say?’ I worried about being a traitor to my friendship with the president. Eventually, I realized, no matter what, no matter what my superiors say, if I don’t say now what I was thinking, I would be a traitor to the oath I made in Medellin. I told them I heard their request, and I believed it to be just. I felt really emotional. I opened my heart to the students, and I said, ‘I support your position as long as you act without violence and act democratically.”

Later, while working at the national university in Nicaragua, Cardenal was approached by the student rebels fighting against the Somoza dictator. They wanted him to help their cause.

“I explained to Marcos, ‘The French Revolution, the Soviet Revolution, and the Cuban Revolutions—all were done without, in spite of, and against Christians. I am a believer. I am a priest.’”

What brought Cardenal over to their side was that they were working to destroy the Somoza army and build up the country for the poor. The National Liberation Front’s leader, who went by Marcos, assured the Jesuit that the student army also had respect for different religious beliefs.

Later, the National Liberation Front asked the Jesuit to speak to the United States Congress to denounce theSomoza president of Nicaragua, whose regime had been supported by the American government for 45 years. “I told them, ‘To denounce the president was an important mission. It was a dangerous mission, and I accept the mission,’” he said.

After Cardenal’s hearing before Congress, President Jimmy Carter stopped providing aid to the dictatorial government in Nicaragua. Eighteen months later, the Somoza army was defeated.

Nicaragua began rebuilding, and Cardenal launched his literacy campaign. “Fifty percent of the country was illiterate,” he said. “Those who cannot read are poor twice. They are the poorest of the poor.”

Cardenal enlisted the help of 60,000 volunteers, which he notes is an impressive number for a country with a population of only three million, to live in the mountains and teach the peasant families to read and write. Although it was challenging, Cardenal credits the volunteers with the success of the campaign.

“What we did in the headquarters office is small compared with what we did with the young people in the mountains,” he said. “Despite threats from counter-revolutionaries, not one young person dropped out.”

Cardenal’s campaign raised the literacy rate in Nicaragua to 87 percent, and in 1980, the country was awarded UNESCO’s literacy award. Currently, the Jesuit runs a program to aid school systems in Nicaragua.

[The Heights]

Here, Fr. Klink ministers to the Lakota’s communities three schools and in its parishes. He’s held many responsibilities during his 26 years of native ministry on the Pine Ridge, including 18 years as the school’s president.

Today, staggering poverty and an unemployment rate that hovers around 80% leave the children of the Pine Ridge facing an uphill struggle as they learn and grown up on the reservation. But, Klink endeavors to make sure the two elementary schools and the high school that make up the school system on the Pine Ridge are a beacon of hope for the possibility of a bright future for the Lakota and their families.

Recently, Klink took the time to speak with National Jesuit News by phone from the Red Cloud School for our monthly podcast series. You can listen to our interview with him below:

Jesuit Vincent Marchionni assists a client at the McKenna Center in Washington, D.C.

Jesuit Vincent Marchionni spent five months working at the Father McKenna Center in Washington, D.C., for his Long Experiment, during which a Jesuit novice engages in full-time apostolic work while living in a Jesuit community.

The center, named after Jesuit Father Horace McKenna, serves the poor, providing meals for homeless men, groceries for local residents and assistance for those facing eviction and utility cutoff.

Marchionni said that the Long Experiment taught him that simple acts of compassion and generosity profoundly and positively affect people’s lives, making God’s presence real and tangible.

“The men show tremendous gratitude for their meals, and it is God’s way of showing me that such grunt work truly does manifest His presence to those in dire circumstances,” he said.

Marchionni also led 12-Step meetings that focused on drugs and alcohol. The group used the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius Loyola to supplement 12-Step spirituality.

Marchionni said that through his experience of serving D.C.’s poorest he realized, “Jesus Christ is always laboring, always desiring to bring his brothers and sisters closer to him. He does hear the cry of the poor, and he answers them with gifts of hope and gratitude.”

Read more about Marchionni’s long experiment in Jesuits magazine.

Jesuit Father Thomas Smolich, president of the Jesuit Conference of the United States, recently added his signature to an ecumenical and interfaith “Circle of Protection” Statement urging the Federal Government to protect programs for the poor. The statement was signed by more than 50 leaders of Christian denominations, organizations and religious orders across the country and marked the strongest and most unified Christian voice in the budget debate. In it, these leaders asked Congress and President Obama to remember that the most vulnerable who are served by government programs should not bear the brunt of the budget-cutting burden.

The Jesuits continue to urge people to reach out to their elected officials today to reiterate that Congress should give moral priority to programs that protect the life and dignity of poor and vulnerable people in these difficult economic times.

One of them was the Catholic Church. Michael A. Corrigan, the Archbishop of New York, made outreach a priority of his administration, founding Italian parishes throughout the metropolitan area for their benefit. He also assigned some of the best priests in the archdiocese to this work. After asking the New York Jesuits to start a new parish on the Lower East Side, Jesuit Father Nicholas Russo (1845-1902) was picked to head it.

Born in Italy, Russo joined the Jesuits at 17 and studied in France and the United States. After his ordination, he was sent to Boston College as a philosophy professor. Over the next eleven years, he wrote two textbooks and served as acting president of the college. Between 1888 and 1890, he taught in New York and Washington before returning to a Manhattan parish, where he doubled as a speechwriter for Archbishop Corrigan.

Flexibility is a cornerstone of Jesuit life, the readiness to go anywhere and assume any task for what founder St. Ignatius Loyola called “God’s greater glory.” A respected professor and college president, Russo gave up a successful academic career to serve in the tenements. A biographer writes, “It must have been, humanly speaking, no small sacrifice . . . for he had held high positions in Boston and New York and his work had lain almost entirely among the better instructed and wealthy.”

To read more about Fr. Russo and his work with the Italian immigrants of New York City, go to the Patheos.com website.