Stan Chu Ilo

Research Professor, World Christianity and African Studies, DePaul University
I was ordained a Catholic priest in my home country of Nigeria, and in addition to my native language, Igbo, I speak French, English and Italian. My educational background includes an MA in theology; an MA in educational leadership; an ecclesiastical licentiate in sacred theology (with a concentration in the Christological images in Luke-Acts and African theologies); and a PhD in theology from the University of St Michael’s College at the University of Toronto (with a concentration in African Christian history’s cross-cultural currents); and a second PhD from the University of South Africa in the sociology of education, specializing in equity and multicultural education in faith-based schooling.

In addition to teaching at DePaul, I am also a visiting professor at Tangaza University College’s Institute of Social Ministry and Mission in Nairobi, and the founder of the Canadian Samaritans for Africa, a nonprofit that works directly with African women to help them alleviate poverty. I also am the editor of the African Christian Studies Series for Pickwick Publications, Wipf and Stock Publishers; a commentator on Africa, religion, and politics for Canada Television (CTV) and Al-Jazeera; a columnist for CNN African Voices, Catholic Register and Premium Times; and a blogger for Huffington Post’s World Affairs, Religion, and Black Voices sections.

My areas of interest are cross-cultural studies, African intellectual and political history, African Christianity and the world Church, equity and diversity in faith-based education and ministry, religion and social transformation, and religion and violence. I coordinate CWCIT’s new African Catholicism Project, a network of established and emerging African Christian scholars to promote mentorship and diverse research in African Christianity and to make this scholarship more visible beyond Africa. Since 2017, my research has been centred on reform and renewal in the Church, especially following Pope Francis' call for a missionary conversion and the crisis of clerical sexual abuse. The fruit of my research is being developed in my forthcoming book: Rome and the Margins: Reform and the Renewal in the Catholic Church Beyond the West.

Some of my recent works include: The Face of Africa: Looking Beyond the Shadows; Love, Joy and Sex: African Conversation on Pope Francis’s Amoris Laetitia and the Gospel of Family in a Divided World; A Poor and Merciful Church: The Illuminative Ecclesiology of Pope Francis; Church and Development in Africa.