Founded by Jesuit Father Greg Boyle during the height of the L.A.’s gang wars 23 years ago, Homeboy Industries’ businesses, which include a silk-screen shop, a bakery and an 86-seat restaurant, currently provide job opportunities and training for over 400 ex-gang members.

This summer, when Los Angeles’ City Hall  was looking for a vendor to move into an unoccupied cafe space on the second floor, a new venture, Homeboy Diner, was born.

Ignatian News Network was there for the opening of the cafe with Fr. Boyle and the diner’s new staff.

Fr. Don Vettese, SJ, with Calendar, a leader of the garbage dwellers in Panamá.

It is often said that the Holy Spirit works in mysterious ways which we are unable to predict or sometimes to even understand. For Jesuit Father Don Vettese what should have been an impediment, a traffic accident, instead opened up the possibility of an even greater calling — to serve the poorest of the poor.

It was 1994 and Fr. Vettese was then president of St. John’s Jesuit High School in Toledo, Ohio.  One day, after his talk with the school’s senior class about the Christian calling to have a preferential option for service to the poor, the students approached Vettese with an idea.

“A few of the students came to my office to explain the difficulty of feeling compassion for the poor without experience,” says Vettese, “and they challenged me to help them educate their hearts.”

It was from that conversation Vettese planned a student service trip to an orphanage he’d founded a few years earlier in Guatemala City.

What Vettese did not know was that this trip would turn into something much greater. One morning, as Vettese and the students  were driving to the orphanage to work , there was a traffic jam resulting from a car accident. When their van was diverted from the main road  they suddenly found themselves in the Guatemala City garbage dump. Here they witnessed a sight that was almost unreal to them: a community of people living, quite literally, in garbage.

“The scene,” Vettese recalls, “was hell. There were acres of mounded garbage burning. There were hundreds of people milling around, looking for food and recyclables, while animals fed on the garbage. Vultures with eight-foot wing spans were swooping down for food and at the recyclers. We saw infants being stuffed into the trash and covered with cardboard to prevent the vultures from hurting them, and later discovered that their mothers felt the dangers from the vulture attacks were more serious than the rat bites that would occur from stuffing them into the garbage.”

Vettese’s talk about Christian leadership came back to the group full-force; that evening, he and the students reflected on the experience of the day, and the students wanted to know what could be done about the plight of the families they’d seen living in the dump. It was that fundamental question which led to the formation of International Samaritan.

Founded in 1995, International Samaritan works to develop livable communities for garbage dump dwellers.  The organization first partners with local governments and other non-profits to put basic infrastructure in place, and then begins addressing the vital needs of each community. The first priority in Guatemala was to build a nursery, so that babies and toddlers could be safe from the dangers of the dump. From there, the organization built schools, homes and community centers, and implemented a micro-loan program. In the years since 1995, International Samaritan has expanded its reach to communities in Egypt, Honduras, Haiti, El Salvador and Panama, and is currently conducting feasibility studies in Sierra-Leon and Ethiopia.

“Our business plan,” says Vettese, “is designed so that we plant the programmatic seeds with the goal of turning the projects over to qualified partners. The people we serve need everything, so we start any project that meets a basic need with partners who agree to sustain them. This frees us to tend to other projects in new locations.”

Many of the results of International Samaritan’s work, notes Vettese, can be difficult to quantify. “I cannot measure how much security a child feels when sleeping in a house with a bed as opposed to being covered by a cardboard box, and I cannot measure the peace of mind a parent feels when his or her child is able to spend the day in a safe and clean nursery as opposed to being stuck in the garbage, or attend school as opposed to working in the dump,” he says.

More concrete evidence of the value of International Samaritan’s work comes from a study administered by faculty at the University of Central America, which reported two key results from the organization’s projects in Guatemala City:

• International Samaritan’s structures and programs have brought stability to a neighborhood once described by the municipality as “transient” and unworthy of financial investment.
• The attitude toward education in the community is changing from little value for education (as reported by the government) prior to the development of International Samaritan institutions to a desire for more education.

Even more recently, the value of International Samaritan’s work has been recognized and lauded by the United Nations, which has granted the organization status as Special Consultants to the U.N. As a result of this new status, International Samaritan representatives will be granted passes to U.N. meetings and be able to participate at designated U.N. sessions. “In addition,” says Vettese, “this should grant us eligibility for certain United Nations Foundation and United States government grants, and greater opportunities for partnering on poverty relief programs.” Just as importantly, however, this new designation will, according to Vettese, “give voice to the people we serve living in the extreme poverty of garbage dump communities.”

Then, of course, there’s the other side of the coin: the value that International Samaritan volunteers get from participating in the organization’s service trips. “Again, these kinds of results can be difficult to measure,” says Vettese, “but we consider it our ‘other mission’—we are primarily servants of the poor, but we also serve the people who have their hearts touched by the communities they encounter on our immersion trips.”  It’s a mission the organization takes very seriously. “We seek to free them from as many logistics as possible so that they can focus on the experience.” To this end, the organization provides what Fr. Vettese calls “airport to airport” stewardship of trip participants. “All they have to do,” he says, “is get themselves to and from the airport. God has blessed us with resources and partnerships that allow us to take care of all of their other concerns so that they can get the most spiritual value possible out of the work they do with us.”

For Vettese, the work of International Samaritan is a daily reminder of God’s generosity. “The truth that came to me on that trip to Guatemala,” he recalls, “was that no one can do anything good without God. When the students initially asked me what we could do about what we saw that day, I said I did not know, and that we would have to wait and see if God would provide opportunities for service. I think He did.”

To find out more about International Samaritan and what you can do to help, visit www.intsamaritan.org, or call 734-222-0701.

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.

The Kino Border Initiative (KBI) was founded in January 2009 as a binational effort to help support and provide assistance to deported migrants. Since its founding, KBI has served thousands of migrants by providing food, shelter, first aid and pastoral support.

Fr. Carroll recently spoke with National Jesuit News by phone from Nogales to discuss the work of KBI and about his own background as a Jesuit. You can listen to our podcast with Carroll via the player below.

Fr. Dall’Oglio is a renowned promoter of dialogue between Christians and Muslims and has been engaged in efforts for internal reconciliation, particularly in the current crisis.

“I’ve been here 30 years, I have worked at the Christian-Muslim dialogue, I have worked to create a monastic community dedicated to the service of harmony between Islam and Christianity, which is a priority worldwide. There are about twenty people in all – brothers and sisters – from different countries: we all learn Arabic, all study Eastern Christianity and Islam. During the latest, painful crisis, we are committed to freedom of opinion, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression and we are trying to work, to cooperate for a progressive access to a mature democracy, for the emergence of a civil society, a dialogue that ensures national unity, the protection of diversity and the enhancement of specificity, a democracy without a primacy of one group over others, rather we are trying to nurture the building of a national consensus. This requires tools. We believe, will believe until the end, in reconciliation, through dialogue, negotiations in order to avoid the suffering of the people and build a future other than that of hatred and revenge”.

Last week Syria condemned the vote by the Arab League to impose sanctions against Damascus as a betrayal of Arab solidarity.

By a vote of 19 to 3, the League’s foreign ministers decided to adopt sanctions to pressure Damascus to end its deadly suppression of an 8-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.

They include a flight ban on senior members of the Syrian regime, a halt to transactions with Syria’s central bank and a suspension of flights into the country.

[Radio Vaticana]

For this year’s Teach In, Jesuit Father Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, provincial of the East African Province of the Society of Jesus, was the keynote speaker who discussed the issues facing his province today. During his time at the Teach In, National Jesuit News interviewed Fr. Orobator about the challenges that the Society of Jesus faces in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and the Republics of the Sudan in the North and South.

“I think the unique mission of the Society of Jesus is that we are able to think ‘outside of the box’.” I think that is very unique to Jesuits,” says Fr. Orobator. “We can work in parishes, we can run schools, we can run communications centers, we can run many different apostolates, but we can do it in a way that is unconventional.”

The theme of this year’s event was “The Gritty Reality: Feel It, Think It, Engage It,” derived from a speech given by former Jesuit Superior General, Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, in 2000 entitled, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education.” Kolvenbach said, “students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively.”

You can watch National Jesuit News’ interview with Fr. Orobator below.

One such group are the Lakota Indians of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. On the reservation, which covers a 5,000 square foot swath of land in the southwestern corner of South Dakota, 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. The Jesuits have been ministering to the Lakota of the Pine Ridge since the late 1800s, when they founded the Red Cloud Indian School.

20/20 recently profiled the Pine Ridge, and some of the young people who live on the reservation, including a few students from the Jesuit’s Red Cloud Indian School.

How to Help: Organizations Working to Improve Life at Pine Ridge

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]

Fr. Arroyo currently serves as the Alabama Associate for the Jesuit Social Research Institute. Based out of New Orleans, the Jesuit Social Research Institute, JSRI, works throughout the Gulf South doing research, analysis, education, and advocacy on the issues of poverty, race, and migration.

You can listen to our podcast with Arroyo via the player below. You can also read his testimony in front of the Alabama’s state legislature by visiting the JSRI site here.

The Teach-In is an opportunity for members of Jesuit institutions and partners to gather for learning, prayer, networking and legislative advocacy on Capitol Hill. Teach-In attendees represent twenty-eight Jesuit universities, over twenty-five Jesuit high schools, Jesuit parishes, Jesuit volunteer communities, and many other Catholic institutions and organizations.

Keynote speakers include Jesuit Father Agbonkhianmeghe Orobator, Provincial of the East African Province of the Society of Jesus, among others.

Fr. Orobator is a lecturer at Hekima College Jesuit School of Theology, Nairobi, Kenya, the author of Theology Brewed in an African Pot and often presents on ethical and theological issues in church, religion, and society in Africa.

The theme of IFTJ 2011 is “The Gritty Reality: Feel It, Think It, Engage It,” derived from a speech given by former Jesuit Superior General, Jesuit Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, in 2000 entitled, “The Service of Faith and the Promotion of Justice in American Jesuit Higher Education.” Kolvenbach said, “Students, in the course of their formation, must let the gritty reality of this world into their lives, so they can learn to feel it, think about it critically, respond to its suffering and engage it constructively.”

IGNATIAN FAMILY TEACH-IN FOR JUSTICE SCHEDULE – more details available at: http://tinyurl.com/IFTJ-schedule

Saturday, November 12, 2011 Georgetown Hotel and Conference Center (3800 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, DC 20057)
4 PM – 10 PM

Sunday, November 13, 2011 Georgetown Hotel and Conference Center (3800 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, DC 20057)
9 AM – 9 PM (includes liturgy at 6:30 PM)

Monday, November 14, 2011
Capitol Hill Advocacy Day (various locations – more information available upon media request)
9 AM – 3 PM