Pope Francis, Laudato Si', the Synod, and the Church Today: A Conversation with Massimo Faggioli

Our guest on this episode of What Matters Most, the second (new) episode of our second season, is Dr. Massimo Faggioli, a full professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University (Philadelphia). 

Massimo is one of the most prominent Catholic theologians working today in North America and Europe.  Massimo is a friend and was a colleague of mine at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota between 2009 to 2016, where we both worked together in the Department of Theology. Massimo Faggioli is a married lay Roman Catholic. He lives in the Philadelphia area with his wife and their two children. He was born, raised, and educated in Italy, as he will discuss in the podcast. He studied in Ferrara, Bologna, Tübingen, and Turin, where he got his PhD in 2002. He taught at the University of Bologna, at the Free University of Bolzano and at the University of Modena-Reggio Emilia. He worked at the John XXIII Foundation for Religious studies in Bologna between 1996 and 2008 under the mentorship of the founder of the Bologna School Giuseppe Alberigo.

Massimo was the founding co-chair of the study-group “Vatican II Studies” for the American Academy of Religion between 2012 and 2017. He has a column in La Croix International and is a contributing writer for Commonweal magazine and the Italian magazine Il Regno. He is co-editor with Bryan Froehle of the new series “Studies in Global Catholicism” for Brill Publishers (first volume scheduled 2023). His books and articles have been published in more than ten languages. His latest books are Catholicism and Citizenship: Political Cultures of the Church in the Twenty-First Century (Liturgical Press 2017), and The Liminal Papacy of Pope Francis. Moving Toward Global Catholicity (Orbis Books, 2020), and Joe Biden and Catholicism in the United States (Bayard 2021).  He is the co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Vatican II (Oxford University Press, 2023) with Catherine Clifford, who has also been a guest on this podcast. 

Massimo has written 15 books, and I have linked to all of them through his Amazon page above, but he suggested in the podcast that the two book he thought might be a good introduction to his thought were his two books on the new Catholic movements and I will link to them specifically here:

The Rising Laity. Ecclesial Movements since Vatican II (Paulist Press, 2016).

Sorting Out Catholicism. A Brief History of the New Ecclesial Movements (Liturgical Press, 2014).

I should also mention that Massimo gave one of our keynote addresses at our Pope Francis conference in May 2023 and that lecture will soon be appearing on our St. Mark’s YouTube channel.

I mentioned a number of other books and documents, which I will link to here also, including Laudato Si’, a new part two of which is due soon, Fratelli Tutti, the International Theological Commission document on the upcoming synod, and Micah Kiel, Reading the Bible in the Age of Francis.

What Matters Most is produced by the Centre for Christian Engagement at St Mark’s College, the Catholic college at UBC. The CCE is a centre at St. Mark’s College that explores the Christian and Catholic intellectual tradition and seek to learn from others, other Christians, members of other religious traditions, and from those who do not claim any particular or formal religious affiliation.

Since St. Mark’s Centre for Christian Engagement seeks to enable the creation of a culture of encounter and dialogue, let me invite you into that discussion. Send me questions, send me ideas for guests, send me comments. Please follow me on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter @biblejunkies, or on Facebook, at Biblejunkies, or on Instagram @biblejunkies. Or email me at jmartens@stmarkscollege.ca. Let me know what you think.

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John W. Martens