A Mass Appeal for Barrio Peace : Gangs: Priests and neighborhood leaders organize monthly gatherings, church services to reach out to residents of strife-torn Pico-Aliso through prayer and a sense of community.

On a side lawn of Utah Street Elementary School last weekend, members of two gangs broke bread with priests, mothers, fathers and children who hope to bring peace to their Boyle Heights neighborhood.

“We have a church building, but this whole parish is constituted in nine different areas. This is a sign to them that we’re with them,” said Father Michael Kennedy, pastor of Dolores Mission Catholic Church. “A lot of people who hadn’t seen each other for years came by, and that’s community. At least we can say there’s hope. There are little signs of hope.”

The monthly gatherings, part of Misa en el Barrio (Mass in the Neighborhood), are taking place in various areas of the Pico-Aliso neighborhood surrounding the Dolores Mission Roman Catholic Church. Partly an effort to bring the church to gang members afraid to cross territorial lines, and to reach out to them with prayer and a sense of community, the gatherings have been well-attended, organizers say.

About 100 adults, teen-agers and children attended Mass at the May 21 gathering, which was followed by a potluck barbecue with potato salad, rice, beans and hot dogs.

Across Utah Street, officers from the Police Department’s anti-gang CRASH unit watched in their idling unmarked cars while Housing Authority Police passed by in their white cars, videotaping the event.

Kennedy started the Mass in the shade of a tall tree as about 50 adults, gang members and their children prayed with him. Some gang members played baseball on the school’s paved diamond. Others leaned against the schoolyard fence and drank from tall, green bottles of Mickey’s beer. They shook their heads and cursed when, half a block away, police handcuffed a gang member and took him away on a warrant.

“We’re trying to show that we care, we love them and to get them motivated to loving themselves more,” said Isabel DePaul, 51, one of the organizers.

DePaul, who has lived in Aliso Village Housing Project for 29 years, knows the tragedies of gang life. Four of her seven sons--two in one gang, two in another--are in jail now. Another son, Javier Cortez, was recently sentenced to 64 years to life for second-degree murder.

“My son Javier was working with Father Greg (Boyle) and doing good, but it’s just that pull that some people have with the kids they grew up with,” DePaul said, shaking her head. “A lot of people don’t understand that.”

The monthly gatherings, as well as the group’s weekly Friday night walks through the neighborhood to talk and pray with gang members and other young people, have given her a sense of participation, she said, that she never had when she just stayed at home and wished for the best.

“In the past 15 years, I’ve been to 32 funerals and it’s just got to stop,” she said.

Organizer Mike Garcia, 48, was once a gang member in Pico-Aliso. He was shot four times, stabbed numerous times and spent 18 years in prison. After his release, he became a born-again Christian eight years ago and has since married and moved to Bell Gardens. He now functions as an AIDS outreach worker for El Centro Human Services in East Los Angeles. Yet, he still maintains contact with gangs and returns to his old neighborhood every week to spread a message of peace.

Teen-age boys with close-cropped hair and gang name tattoos, wearing rosaries around their necks and baggy clothes, come up to hug him or shake his hand. He walked up to those drinking along the fence and urged them to join the Mass.

“It takes a lot of time,” Garcia said as his offer was refused over and over.

Some of the teen-agers said they appreciated the effort, but it would take a lot more than prayer and barbecue to change conditions in the neighborhood.

“It’s not going to change,” said Jose Alvarez, an 18-year-old gang member. “Everything stays the same. They always talk about things getting better, but it doesn’t.”

But just before walking away, Alvarez added: “Maybe it will. I don’t know.”

Police cars cruised Utah Street, occasionally parking nearby. Garcia and others called the heavier-than-usual police presence an intimidation tactic to discourage these events.

“Their way of taking care of the gangs is jails, locking them up in institutions,” Garcia said. “We’re going to keep doing this and showing (the gangs) that we’re here for them and the answer is not locking them up.”

Standing in his crisp, blue uniform and sunglasses next to two unmarked police cars, Officer Hector Esparza has a different outlook on the gang problem. He and other members of the department’s CRASH unit said their job is to keep gang members from getting into trouble.

One of the biggest problems in the neighborhood, he said, is the absence of fathers and positive male role models. “I think the word for all these people is love --to treat people with love,” Esparza said as he looked toward the gathering. “There’s a lot of good people that live in here.

“We don’t see anything wrong,” he said, “with trying the truce or having this (gathering). Hey, I tell these guys, ‘You can make it but you’ll have to make it on your own. Nobody cares about you guys, but you can make it.’ ”

As the crowd thinned and the women started putting away the food, DePaul took a deep breath and wondered aloud whether any of the young people received any solace from the gathering.

She looked across the way toward a basketball court where two of her sons and a grandson were playing basketball--with gang members.

“It’s a big challenge here in the neighborhood but there’s a lot of kids here who are good,” she said. “Some people might say, ‘Well, why don’t you just move out?’ But what I believe in is staying here and changing things here in the neighborhood.

“You just have to have faith.”