Pilgrims of Hope, Episode 7: Walking with At-Risk Youth

Conversations about Finding and Sharing Hope: A video series for the Jubilee Year 2025

Hosted by Fr. Ron Will

Welcome to episode seven in the series “Traveling With Pilgrims of Hope.” This series introduces us to individuals who have experienced hope and who are striving to bring hope to others.

Today we talk with Fr. Denny Kinderman, a Missionary of the Precious Blood, part of the team at Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation to share some of his experiences in working on the south side of Chicago with juveniles and their families who experience incarceration or who live with gang violence.

Following are highlights from the conversation between Fr. Ron and Fr. Denny, edited for clarity. Watch the video for the full interview. Learn more about Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation here: https://www.pbmr.org/

 

Fr. Ron Will: Thank you for the Denny for joining us today. First, give us an overview of the ministry that you’ve been doing several years now in Chicago, and how did you get started in that?

Fr. Denny Kinderman: Thank you father Ron for this invitation. It’s a great opportunity to share with everyone during this year of being Pilgrims of Hope what we do here. We began this ministry of reconciliation almost 23 years ago. And it kind of stemmed from the fact that as Missionaries of the Precious Blood the charism of renewal and reconciliation is what we’re mainly about. Some of us got together and thought, what would it look like if we just focused on reconciliation, not within the parish context, so we can just fully see what reconciliation can look like. We also thought that we needed to come to a place in need of reconciliation. So we came to Chicago, the south side of Chicago in a neighborhood that’s impacted with violence and poverty and lack of resources.

It’s a place where the police aren’t always seen as helpful, a place where the schools aren’t as good as they need to be. We have a center here and at that center, we try to address the needs of the people here. Our mission states that we offer radical hospitality. That means everyone’s welcome. We work with youth and adults with mothers and families with men and women who are impacted by the criminal justice system, people coming out of prison. We try to offer them wraparound services to help them get on their feet.

We offer for, especially for mothers whose sons or family members have been murdered or whose family members are incarcerated, we offer opportunities for peace circles for everyone who comes with whatever needs they have. We offer counseling and therapy.

Fr. Ron: Your primary ministry seems to be what Pope Francis called “accompaniment.”

Fr. Denny: We accompany people in their needs. For example, we go [with families] to court. We are in the courtroom. This past Sunday, we were reflecting on the Good Samaritan. And, you know, the neighbor is the one who reaches out to the one in need. Too often in the courtroom, you don’t see that friendly reaching out. You see divisions. Justice, which you’d expect to see in a courtroom] really is love lived in public. What better hope is there for the future than for us to be in public places, making sure we are living love for one another. That’s the kind of justice that heals.

Or another example. Yesterday morning around eight o’clock in the morning, I got a text from a young man who said his baby daughter needs milk. So what do you do? You help. People need hope. You can’t constantly be just looking at your own busy life and not be ready to be that neighbor to someone who needs help. So we see ourselves as agent agents of hope.

And, you know, they’re not necessarily hoping for more. They’re hoping for something better. Sometimes people who have what they need will hope for more. But here, it’s more like people are just hoping for something better, something really needed.

Fr. Ron: They have hope. You help them get in touch with the hope, just by accompanying them, companioning them.

Fr. Denny: Yes. What I try to do is let them know that’s really why I go to the detention center to visit with them. We try to sustain them in their hope and actually they sustain me.

Fr. Ron: They sustain you in hope?

Fr. Denny: The people that I work with in the center have a kind of hope that they prevents them from being overwhelmed. It reminds me of Romans 12:12 (“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.), be patient during your time of tribulation. Hope can take away the anxiety. Hope can keep you patient even while you’re going through the unknown and the tribulation. And I see it in them. And that kind of passes it on to me. That keeps me going. That makes it possible for me to wake up each morning excited and thrilled to be about the ministry that I’ve been called to.

Fr. Ron: Even though it’s draining, you are excited about getting up the next day and ministering to more people.

Fr. Denny: As a matter of fact, when I go to the juvenile detention center, it’s at five o’clock in the evening, and sometimes after a pretty full day, I’m thinking, I don’t know if I can do this. But I go in and I’m there for three hours, and when I come out, I’m energized.

Another example. I went to visit a young man in the hospital. He had been shot in the mouth and need extensive operations. His mother is there visiting. She has one son in the hospital and another son at home who is paralyzed because he had been shot in the back, in the spine. Her third son had also been shot, but he was OK. She’s there visiting her son in the hospital and she is able to talk and smile, and we pray together. I think, if she can go through all that, why can’t I spend a few hours with kids in the juvenile detention center or with the kids I have to work with at the center, or go to court for, you know?

It’s like seeing our precious blood spirituality from the perspective of the victim. I too am suffering because of taking on the suffering of others. The suffering has a ripple effect that goes through the whole community, that calls us to be there for one another.

Fr. Ron Will: Listening to you, I’m thinking of the song “Companions on the Journey.” You really accompany those incarcerated youth, you accompany the people in your neighborhood, you accompanying one another who work and volunteer at your center. You are really companions on the journey.

Fr. Denny: We are all part of the same family. And as Brian Stevenson says, we have to “get proximate.” Pope Francis said the same thing. You can’t heal, you can’t work things out from a distance. You have to get close. You have to come together. And so that’s what hope offers.

 

Fr. Ron: As long as we stay apart or hold people at arm’s length, we don’t get to know them; we feel scared. But by getting close, knowing their names, so we befriend them, they befriend you.

Fr. Denny: I think that’s what our spirituality is all about. It’s like seeing life as it really is and knowing that that’s what we go through. Look back at what you’ve been through. How many times have you been ill? How many tragedies have there been in your life? Look at what you’ve been through, and you’re still here. Right?

So what makes you think that God isn’t going to be with you in the days that lie ahead? What did Thomas Aquinas say about hope? He said that hope is something that is attainable, but it is also arduous. Arduous is the word he used. It’s difficult to attain.

I often tell the kids in juvenile detention, there is going to be a day in the future — we don’t know when that is, how far off or how close it might be — but there is a day in the future where you are going to be free again. You’re going to be able to get on with your life. Right now is the hard part, the arduous part, for you to prepare yourself for that day. It’s the opportunity to see life as it really is and acknowledge it.

Hope isn’t like a strategy or a plan. Hope is something that has to come from deep within. There is, naturally, the real need for prayer. Knowing that the future won’t necessarily bring what we’re hoping for, but if we can set aside our own particular need and hope that the future brings what God wants for us, then we’ll find our way. It won’t be clear, but gradually it’ll unfold, and we’ll make our way.

Fr. Ron Will: thank you for sharing with us FR. Denny. thank you for your ministry and for bringing hope to your neighborhood and the juveniles, mothers of juveniles that you gather together. Thank you for being a pilgrim of hope and inspiring our listeners today.

All of the videos in this series can be found here: Traveling with Pilgrims of Hope

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[Fr. Ron Will, a Precious Blood priest and spiritual director, is a graduate of Catholic Theological Union and Creighton University’s School of Christian Spirituality. He has a special interest in helping form intentional disciples of Jesus, encouraging others to go spiritually deep-sea diving to explore a deeper relationship with God, and walking with people as they dive into the ocean of God’s mystery actually experiencing God rather than simply dipping one’s toe into the water.]

Photo Credit: ID 321463961 | Anchor © Yulia Ryabokon | Dreamstime.com

Music Credit: “We Are Marching” (Siyahamba). Performed by First Christian Church of Tacoma. Text: South African. Tune: South African. © 1984, Utryck, Walton Music Corporation, agent. Used with permission under onelicense.net, #A-725830

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