Clergyman

We need a pope to oversee not simply a modernization of the church but its total transformation.

It has become an accepted tenet that kids will rarely listen to their parents but seldom fail to imitate them. Communicating the message has never been a good substitute for 'showing up' and embodying the message.

My job isn't to fix or rescue or to save. It's to accompany, see people, listen to them.

I'm not opposed to success.

Delegations from all over the world visit Homeboy Industries and scratch their heads as we tell them of our difficulty in placing our people in jobs after their time with us. Americans' seeming refusal to believe in a person's ability to redeem himself strikes these folks as foreign indeed.

The Church should say, 'I'm frightened that women will be ordained;' that's honest, say that. But don't say, 'It's a grave sin,' because that's nonsense.

I do believe in lessons learned. I have learned that you work with gang members and not with gangs; otherwise, you enforce the cohesion of gangs and supply them oxygen.

We need a pope to usher in a new era of inclusion, the end of a sinful clericalism, and a strong sense of duty to those on society's margins. The 1 billion faithful long for a leader who is fearless and driven - not by terror but by love.

People have started to see that 'smart on crime' rather than 'tough on crime' makes sense.

As a society, we come up lacking in many of the marks of compassion and wisdom by which we measure ourselves as civilized.

People have to see that there is a high degree of complexity about belonging to a gang. It's a symptom, not a problem.

I think not everything that works helps, and not everything that helps works.

I think that any program that's born from below rather than on high is going to survive.