Gangs in Los Angeles have met their match, and it’s a Jesuit priest.

The Rev. Greg Boyle, founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, spoke to Marquette students and the public Wednesday night about his involvement with keeping gang-involved youth in Los Angeles off the streets.

The appellate courtroom in Marquette’s Eckstein Hall was packed to capacity as Boyle kept his audience captive with stories about the start of his own business, which would eventually become the largest gang intervention program in the country.

His program began kind of out-of-the-blue when Ray Stark, a famous movie producer, said he would donate money to Boyle’s community. Boyle suggested they buy the bakery across the street from his parish, and thus Homeboy Bakery was born.

Through his speech, Boyle expressed the need for kinship and stressed the importance of community, “no us and them, just us.”

“If kinship were our goal, we would no longer be promoting justice, but celebrating,” he said.

Throughout the night, he told stories about gang members changing their lives through Homeboy’s program.

He talked about how two men who worked for him were “once shooting bullets at each other, now were shooting text messages.”

He told how he took three gang members to the White House for dinner, and how he blessed a former gang member’s daughter before she left for college.

Boyle said the reason everyone was there was not to hear him speak, but to make a difference in the world.

He hopes that what Marquette students take away from his speech is that anyone can do something in their local community to create a sense of kinship and community.

“Whether it’s mentoring kids or helping other seek employment, I can’t imagine anyone not being a beneficial presence to these kids and this issue,” Boyle said.

Anna Layden, a freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences, said she really took away his message of kinship.

“We don’t know what everyone is going through and we cannot make judgment on appearance, we just need to recognize that we are all one,” she said.

Caitlin Devine, a Jesuit volunteer who works as an organizer for low income working women, said what she heard tonight really resonated with what is currently going on in her life in terms of the budget crisis and trying to find jobs for people.

“If everyone thought like Father Boyle did, we would have an ideal society,” she said.

Lydia Biddle, a fellow Jesuit volunteer, said his speech was “beautiful and inspiring” and reignited her passion for working in social justice.

Carly Zarr, a junior in the College of Education, said his speech was “a breath of fresh air.”

She said he embodies Marquette’s entire mission and has touched all of us.

Boyle said that Homeboy Industries does not plan to go national.

“People come to our place and study what we do and then steal it,” he said. He feels it is better that way because then their organization is built from their own community.