Leaving a legacy for Hub's youth

Six years working some of Boston's meanest streets, and earlier assignments in Brooklyn and Newark, have taught Brother Celestino Arias a lot about children, gangs, police officers, and people in general.

As he prepares to leave the city, he's willing to share some of that knowledge -- but cautiously, lest combatants in Boston's turf wars avenge themselves on the program for Cape Verdean youth that he built.

There is a lot right with adolescents, says the 38-year-old Capuchin friar, who is known in the social service community as Brother Tino and among the children as just plain Tino.

``Teens have a strong altruistic streak," he said in an interview at his office on Columbia Road in Dorchester. ``They are loyal, they are easy to train, and they don't question authority" -- as long as they feel that the authorities are honest and are watching out for their welfare.

That is the way the kids of the Cape Verdean ghetto seem to feel about Tino.

Under Tino's guidance, parishes across Dorchester and Roxbury that had been working in relative isolation have for the last 10 months combined the strongest elements of their individual efforts in a monthly Mass, at which youth pledge to reject gangs and drugs.

This month's Mass -- the last for Tino before he departs for a short-term project in New York and longer-term work in Kenya and Tanzania -- was celebrated yesterday by Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley at St. Katharine Drexel Parish in Roxbury.

Starting with one employee -- himself -- in 2000, Tino built the Catholic Charities Cape Verdean program into a $300,000-a-year operation with 25 employees, most from the community.

More than 200 youths from some of the roughest areas of the city are now affiliated with the teen center. About 60 children a day receive peer counseling and academic assistance, play sports, and attend focus groups to help them cope with the violent environment in which they live.

``Please, let's not have any Saint Tino stuff," the T -shirt-clad friar pleaded when asked recently about his accomplishments. But he also makes clear, in his quietly self-assured tone, that he believes passionately in the importance of the spiritual component of youth work. If the activities provided for youths do not lead to greater self-esteem and raised expectations, ``all you get is a gang member who's good at basketball or a thug who is good on the computer."

Tino criticizes some current approaches to Boston's worsening wave of youth violence, saying they are overly focused on the worst of the worst and too reliant on military-like sweeps of neighborhoods in crisis.

Much more attention, he says, should be dedicated to helping youths avoid gangs, drugs, and violence in the first place.

Born in the United States and raised in his parents' native Spain until age 6, Tino grew up in New York towns where he said his accent made him a target. While a student at Boston College, he volunteered as a Boy Scout leader in the South End.

Studying at Columbia University for his master's in social work, he interned in tough sections of Newark and Brooklyn. He then spent time in Brazil, and worked another two years in Brooklyn before returning to Boston.

Agostinho Lopes , a math major at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is one of 48 youths from the teen center pursuing a college degree .

Brother Tino ``gave me guidance," said Lopes, who emigrated from Cape Verde at 17. ``He talked with me about the way things work here and gave me a vision" of a brighter future.

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com