Nicky Cruz is a Christian

Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

 evangelist

Evangelism

Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....

, the founder of Nicky Cruz Outreach, an evangelistic Christian ministry. He was also once the director of Teen Challenge

Teen Challenge

Teen Challenge is a Pentecostal Christian recovery program and a network of Christian social and evangelizing work centers. It is a 12-18 month program that serves drug addicts, alcoholics, gang members, prostitutes and people with other characteristics that the program considers to be...

, serving under David Wilkerson

David Wilkerson

David Ray Wilkerson was an American Christian evangelist, best known for his book The Cross and the Switchblade...

 before founding another ministry home himself in California. Prior to his conversion he was the leader of a New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 gang

Gang

A gang is a group of people who, through the organization, formation, and establishment of an assemblage, share a common identity. In current usage it typically denotes a criminal organization or else a criminal affiliation. In early usage, the word gang referred to a group of workmen...

, The Mau-Maus

Mau Maus

Mau Maus was the name of a 1950s street gang in New York. The book and the adapted film The Cross and the Switchblade and biography Run Baby Run document the life of its most famous leader, Nicky Cruz. Their name was derived from the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya.-History:The Mau Maus were a Brooklyn...

.
Cruz was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico

San Juan, Puerto Rico

San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...

 where he was raised by his parents. His parents practiced brujeria

Brujeria (Witchcraft)

Brujería is the Spanish word for witchcraft. Brujeria also refers to a mystical sect of male witches in the southernmost part of Argentina. Both men and women can be witches, brujos and brujas respectively...

 and were followers of spiritism

Spiritism

Spiritism is a loose corpus of religious faiths having in common the general belief in the survival of a spirit after death. In a stricter sense, it is the religion, beliefs and practices of the people affiliated to the International Spiritist Union, based on the works of Allan Kardec and others...

 ("espiritismo").