Special coverage:
Stan Chu Ilo

Stan Chu Ilo

Stan Chu Ilo is a Catholic priest from Awgu Diocese, Nigeria. He is also a senior research professor at the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology at DePaul University, Chicago, and the president of the Friends of the Pan-African Catholic Network (PACTPAN). He is the author of African Ecological Ethics and Spirituality for Cosmic Flourishing and editor of Handbook of African Catholicism. 

By this Author

Pope Francis celebrates Mass at Ndolo airport in Kinshasa, Congo, Feb. 1, 2023. (CNS/Paul Haring)

Francis is asking the church to dream again. Why do so many oppose him?

Many Catholics around the world connect with this papacy and the universal church, but for some Francis' dreams of a more diverse and inclusive church are threatening.

Fr. Stan Chu Ilo, center, wearing green, poses with people at a holding center for migrants in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Ilo and others interviewed the people at the center for the Vatican's "Doing Theology from the Existential Peripheries" project. (Courtesy of Stan Chu Ilo)

What if the peripheries were really the center that defines the church today?

The stories we heard through a Vatican project were moving accounts of the lives of everyday people, and the resilience of many who are rejected and abandoned at the peripheries of life by society and our churches.

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