‘No such a thing as a bad person’ says bishop

Bishop of Kilmore Martin Hayes, who is also the Bishop’s Conference liaison to the Irish Prison Service drew attention to the work of Fr Greg Boyle SJ, founder of Homeboy Industries during Prisoners’ Sunday on October 13.

Prisoners’ Sunday is a day to direct thoughts and prayers to prisoners and their families. “Fr Greg believes that there is no bad person, only people who have not yet discovered the good within them,” the bishop said.

Homeboy Industries is a gang intervention and rehabilitation programme in Los Angeles, US. Bishop Hayes said Fr Boyle “started a school as there were no places for those gang members in their local schools, and then he started Homeboy Industries as there was little appetite among employers to take on the graduates from his school.”

Bishop Hayes said “People must see themselves as good and that we must remove the blindfold of our perceptions to see this goodness in others.”

The bishop shared Fr Boyle’s view that prisoners are used to being watched but not to being seen for their potential to do good. “All of us are a whole lot more that the worst thing we have ever done.”

“Fr Greg challenges us to look at new ways of intervening with, and rehabilitating, those who are prisoners today,” Bishop Hayes concluded.