She said things had quieted down in the area, partly through community work encouraged by Father Nelson.

“It’s easy to stay at home and say you love your neighbor, but you have to go out,” she said. “A Christian needs to take action.”

Father Nelson can go down any street in his parish and be reminded of the realities facing his congregation. On one block, he recalled the woman whose son was shot dead. On another, he went past the building that was home to a Mexican woman, with five children, who asked him for prayers at a Mass because she was dying from cancer. After she was turned away by one hospital because she had no insurance, Father Nelson was able to get her into a Catholic hospice.

“There are so many young Mexicans who are dying, 30, 40 years old and with no insurance,” he said. “How many of them do we never meet? How many do we miss?”

He sometimes thinks back to a generation of priests in the Bronx, shaped by the Second Vatican Council, who took to the streets outside their churches — ravaged by drugs, gang fights and arson fires — and rallied people to reclaim their neighborhoods. “Those old-time guys didn’t want to put money into buildings,” he said. “The money had to go to helping people.”

Father Nelson thinks those old days should be the model in the age of Francis. The church is always at its best, he said, when it embraces the needs of those on the margins.

“When we are really church, we have no problems,” he said. “It’s when we are a business that we have other problems. But we have the good news, we do good things. We love people.”