Synodality and the Abuse Crisis: the Church Is Still Stuck in Trent

By Massimo Faggioli
La Croix International
December 10, 2019

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Dr. Massimo Faggioli, a married lay Roman Catholic, is professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University, Philadelphia.

Massimo worked in the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna between 1996 and 2008 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Turin in 2002.

His doctoral dissertation discussed the history of the appointment of bishops after the Council of Trent. He has studied theology at the Karl-Eberhards-Universitat Tubingen (1999-2000) and has been invited to work as a post-doctoral researcher in the Faculte de Theologie et Sciences Religieuses at the Universite Laval, Quebec (Spring 2002).

Since moving to the US in 2008, where he was visiting fellow at the Jesuit Institute at Boston College, Massimo has also taught at the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) from 2009 to 2016, where he was the founding director of the Institute for Catholicism and Citizenship.

He now lives in Philadelphia with his wife and their two children.

Massimo writes regularly for Italian and English-speaking newspapers and journals on the Church, religion and politics. He has a column in La Croix International (formerly Global Pulse) since 2014. He is also contributing writer for Commonweal and for the Italian magazine Il Regno.

He has been co-chair of the study group Vatican II Studies for the American Academy of Religion between 2012 and 2017.

His books and articles have been published in more than ten languages. His scholarly essays focus on Vatican II, on Church history in Italy, on the application of the council of Trent, on the diplomacy of the Vatican, and on the new Catholic movements.

His most recent publications include the books: The Rising Laity. Ecclesial Movements since Vatican II (Paulist, 2016); La onda larga del Vaticano II. Por un nuevo posconcilio (Universidad Alberto Hurtado: Santiago de Chile, 2017); Cattolicesimo, nazionalismo, cosmopolitismo. Chiesa, societa e politica dal Vaticano II a papa Francesco (Roma: Armando Editore, 2018).