{"id":5345,"date":"2006-01-19T09:00:03","date_gmt":"2006-01-19T09:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/el-padrecito.html"},"modified":"2006-01-19T09:00:03","modified_gmt":"2006-01-19T09:00:03","slug":"el-padrecito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/el-padrecito.html","title":{"rendered":"El Padrecito"},"content":{"rendered":"

A priest and his brother reaching out to Latino youth:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Some people might be skeptical of a priest who reaches out to teenagers online, but the thousands of young people who log onto his Web site seem to think that \u201cEl Padrecito\u201d and his 2-inch-tall alter ego are doing a good thing. <\/p>\n

Father Masseo Gonzalez, a Franciscan Catholic priest based in Arroyo Grande, is the brother of \u201cHomies\u201d creator David Gonzalez. A series of collectible figurines that depict residents of the fictional L.A. barrio of \u201cQuien Sabe,\u201d (\u201cWho knows\u201d in Spanish), Homies grew from a comic strip in Lowrider magazine into a fad among Latino youth that continues today. <\/p>\n

Since its start in 1998, the hobby continues to gain momentum, attracting more and more fans with each set of new releases. As others did with Beanie Babies, some people try to amass collections of all the Homies. <\/p>\n

The 150-plus characters include \u201cHollywood,\u201d a flamboyant zoot-suit wearing ladies’ man, and \u201cPelon,\u201d who sells stolen merchandise out of the back of his lowrider. Since 1999, they have also included \u201cEl Padrecito,\u201d or \u201cThe Little Priest.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201c(My brother) was trying to make a barrio,\u201d said Gonzalez. \u201cSomewhere you need a priest.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The El Padrecito site<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A priest and his brother reaching out to Latino youth: Some people might be skeptical of a priest who reaches out to teenagers online, but the thousands of young people who log onto his Web site seem to think that \u201cEl Padrecito\u201d and his 2-inch-tall alter ego are doing a good thing. Father Masseo Gonzalez,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nEl Padrecito - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/el-padrecito.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"El Padrecito - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A priest and his brother reaching out to Latino youth: Some people might be skeptical of a priest who reaches out to teenagers online, but the thousands of young people who log onto his Web site seem to think that \u201cEl Padrecito\u201d and his 2-inch-tall alter ego are doing a good thing. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5345\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}