Controversial Catholic youth ministry speaker Justin Fatica is tough and bruised, but softhearted, and few dispute that he has the knack for reaching troubled kids.
The children who show up for Kids ALIVE in Burlington’s Old North End number between 40 and 50, and most range in age from about 8 to 16. Many live nearby, in poverty. On a grey, snowy Saturday morning in February, they trudge in from the cold, filling a small, blue-and-white room in an old building on Elmwood Avenue, and shed their coats, hats and snow boots. The younger kids are shepherded to an adjacent playroom; the rest linger and chatter until a pastor, who oversees the weekly, nondenominational outreach program, leads them in some opening music. They sing: “Jesus loves me, this I know ...” The crowd is larger than usual today, and the reason for this is a young man named Justin Fatica, who stands by the door, bellowing in a baritone that nearly drowns out the rest of the room. Only 29, Fatica has already staked a claim as the most intensely passionate -- and most intensely debated -- Catholic youth minister in America. As founder of the national Hard as Nails movement, and leader of the Syracuse, N.Y., diocese’s Mega Youth Ministry, Fatica is the face of two successful ministry programs in the Northeast. Last December his life and work became the subject of a highly publicized HBO documentary (also called “Hard as Nails”). He’s the one the kids have turned out to see. He takes the front of the room and begins his talk.
Justin Fatica, preaching in front of a group of youths, is a sight to behold. Compact and muscular with a square jaw, wide eyes and cropped dark hair, he jumps, dances, stomps and crouches. His voice vacillates between croaky, Jersey-tinged street talk and a sharp, excited bark. His eyes blaze and the tendons in his neck bulge, even when he’s calm. For emphasis, he throws his right arm outwards, cocking his index finger in an exaggerated point, or flicking his wrist as if he were swatting something -- Satan, maybe -- away. Frequently he is overcome by tears and stops to compose himself, only to launch into another yell.
With a few too-cool exceptions, the kids are enthralled. Several of them saw Fatica during his first visit here in 2007 and took his message back home to their broken families. They seem to appreciate that Fatica talks with them the way he would with an older audience. “I keep it real,” he tells them. (A Kids ALIVE volunteer informs me some of these children have been exposed to all kinds of abuse. They can handle the straight talk.)
The kids laugh with Fatica’s jokes, and some of the teen girls cry when, choking up himself, he gets to his main point: “I’m here to tell you you’re not worthless. You’re not those things you think you are. You are great, and you are amazing, and you have a God who loves you because of who you are.”