GUSTAVO MORELLO sJ
I am Gustavo Morello, SJ, a Jesuit priest and professor of sociology at Boston College. I earned my Ph.D. from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (2011), an MA in Social Sciences (2001, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba), and Licentiates in Theology (2007, Universidad del Salvador) and Philosophy (1991, Universidad del Salvador).
I taught at Universidad Católica de Córdoba (1997-2011), was a visiting scholar at the University of Michigan (2009-2010), served as PI of the research project ‘The transformation of lived religion in urban Latin America: a study of contemporary Latin Americans’ experience of the transcendent’ (2015-2018), and gave The D’Arcy Lectures at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, UK (2019). My latest books are Religion in Latin America. An Enchanted Modernity (OUP, 2021) and The Catholic Church and Argentina’s Dirty War (OUP, 2015).
I am a sociologist of religion, with a particular focus on the interaction between religion and modernity in Latin America. By modernity, I mean a culture characterized by the promise of emancipation and abundance, achieved through the differentiation of social functions, the separation of spheres of values, capitalist dynamics, and the expansion of human rights, all organized within national states. By religion, I mean an ongoing human relation with superhuman beings. The emphasis is on “relation”. The connection people have with the supra-human, even when they are not affiliated, is what makes them religious or spiritual. When the relation does not exist, there is no religion.