My overall research agenda focuses on practices; what people do when they practice religion (including lighting candles, getting tattoos, doing yoga, wearing garments, attending church, and so on).
I pay attention to the concrete historical and cultural context and to the practitioner’s material and embodied engagement, exploring how a religious person relates to divinity.
Religious things happen when there is an ongoing relationship between the person and the supra-human. From the perspective of practices, I am not necessarily talking about a reality that conforms to churches’ mandates or to the variables sociologists have been using to measure religious practice (church attendance).
Instead, I study what people do to connect with the supra-human.My research is international not only because I focus on religion outside the United States, but also because I collaborate with colleagues from other parts of the world.
I try to bridge Latin American scholarship with U.S. and European scholarship, not only engaging with academic production from the North and the South, but also publishing and participating in conferences in both English and Spanish, and developing academic collaborations with colleagues in different countries in the Americas and Europe.
Tattoos as religious practices
Tattoos have been a compelling area of research, in part because of their popularity among younger generations. Tattoos exemplify my point that we cannot keep viewing contemporary religion as we have done so far. New generations have different ways of sacralizing reality and expressing their inner lives. Secondly, tattoos allow me to explore religion beyond mainstream practices (without rejecting religious traditions) and to pay attention to a practice that academia has neglected (considering it non-Western and marginal), even though tattoos have existed in the Western Christian tradition since the first century. Studying tattoos from a sociology of religion perspective is a way to explore religious practices as the outcome of a struggle, a negotiation among traditions, practitioners, and scholars. Tattoos allow me to explore the question “Who has the power to define religion?”
2026 El tatuaje religioso. Un análisis entre la religiosidad popular y la religión vivida, Aposta. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, v.24, n.110, España. e709.
https://revistaaposta.com/index.php/ra/article/view/728
2025 “El oficio (religioso) de tatuar”, in Encartes, vol. 8, núm. 15, marzo-agosto 2025, pp. 267-279.
https://encartes.mx/morello-tatuajes-religiosidad-vivida-andalucia-loreto/
2024 “The case for tattoos as religious practices. From footnote to survey indicator”, Critical Research on Religion, 12 (2):191-209. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20503032241254368
2024 “Tattoo artists as religious figures”, First coauthor with Tiago Franco de Paula, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 63(3):675-694.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jssr.12910
2021 “Women, Tattoos, and Religion. An exploration into women’s inner life.” Fist author with Mikayla Sanchez, Diego Moreno, Jack Engelman, and Alexis Evangel; Religions 12: 517.
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12070517
2021 “I’ve got you under my skin. Tattoos and religion in three Latin American cities.” Social Compass. February, Vol 68, n 1, p. 61-80.
https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0037768620962367
Lived Religion
Once dominated by Catholicism, Latin Americans today are migrating from one religion to another as they seek meaning beyond the empirical world. Yet their quest is unfolding in ways scholars and religious leaders did not expect.
To explore religious practices in Latin America, I directed the research project ‘The Transformation of Lived-Religion in Urban Latin America: A Study of Contemporary Latin Americans’ Experience of the Transcendent’, which was funded by the John Templeton Foundation ($511,000).
Unlike other studies on secularization in the region, the focus is on ordinary individuals’ relationship to transcendence (not on institutions). Secularization concepts, with their North Atlantic bias, have failed to account for ways other than membership and affiliation to explain changes and are not applicable to other cultural contexts.
Using qualitative techniques – semi-structured interviews about life-story events and object elicitation prompted by photographs and meaningful objects – researchers from Boston College and universities in Lima, Peru; Córdoba, Argentina; and Montevideo, Uruguay, created spiritual narratives from a sample of 240 individuals across 4 religious groups (Catholic, Evangelical Pentecostal, Other Traditions, ‘nones’) and 2 socioeconomic strata (lower and upper-middle class) in 3 cities (Lima, Córdoba, and Montevideo). We conducted one interview with each subject, followed by an object-elicitation meeting 3-6 weeks later. The project’s comparative design is pioneering, as it will be one of the first comparative qualitative studies of religiosity in Latin America.
Publications
Books:
2021 Lived Religion in Latin America: An Enchanted Modernity, by Oxford University Press.
https://academic.oup.com/book/39105?login=true
2020 Una Modernidad Encantada. Religión vivida en Latinoamérica, Editorial de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba, Córdoba – Argentina.
https://libros.ucc.edu.ar/productos/una-modernidad-encantada/
2019 La religión como experiencia cotidiana: creencias, prácticas y narrativas espirituales en Sudamérica Co-Editor: Hugo Rabbia, Gustavo Morello, Néstor Da Costa and Catalina Romero. EDUCC, Fondo Editorial de la PUC, UCU.
https://libros.ucc.edu.ar/productos/la-religion-como-experiencia-cotidiana-creencias-practicas-y-narrativas-espirituales-en-sudamerica/
Articles:
2026 Cambio religioso y transformación social en América Latina: hacia una modernidad encantada Siwô’: Revista de Teología/Estudios Sociorreligiosos, (Costa Rica), Vol. 19 Núm. 1 (Enero-Junio 2026)
https://www.revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/siwo/article/view/22306
2026 “Esto no es religión. La religión vivida como perspectiva”, in Revista Mexicana de Sociología, 88,1(enero-marzo) 75-104 https://revistamexicanadesociologia.unam.mx/index.php/rms/article/view/62997/55711
2023 “Beyond words. A denotative analysis of participant-produced photos of sacred objects in the context of a study on lived religion in Latin America.” Second co-author, with Gaëlle Bargain-Darrigues. The Sociological Review, Vol 71, Issue 5, p. 1037-1057,
https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261231166527
2023 “The construction of the sacred through photographs displayed in Latin American homes.” Social Compass, v70 n1, p 127-148,
https://doi.org/10.1177/00377686231157295
2022 “Entre el opio del pueblo y la búsqueda de la salvación. Aproximaciones a la “religiosidad vivida” desde América Latina”, second co-author with Valentina Pereira Arenas, Revista de Estudios Sociales, 82 Octubre-Diciembre, p. 3-21 https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/index.php/res/issue/view/429
2021 “Catholicism in Context: Religious Practice in Latin America,” Journal of Global Catholicism: Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 3. p.46-63. DOI: 10.32436/2475-6423.1104
https://crossworks.holycross.edu/jgc/vol6/iss1/3
2021 “Nobody prays alone. The practice of prayer among Latin American Catholics”, International Journal of Latin American Religions. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41603-021-00144-4
2021 “Exploring the Non-Affiliated in South America.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Second author. Da Costa, Néstor; Morello, Gustavo; Rabbia, Hugo; Romero, Catalina. June 2021, Vol. 89, No. 2, pp. 562–587
https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfab045
2021 The Pope, the Poor, and the Location of Religion in Argentina’s Public Sphere. Latin American Perspectives, Issue 241, Vol. 48 No. 6, November 2021, 179–193 DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19879410
2019 “Why Study Religion from a Latin American Sociological Perspective? An Introduction to Religions Issue, “Religion in Latin America, and among Latinos Abroad”. Religions 10, no. 6: 399.
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/10/6/399
2019 “The Symbolic Efficacy of Pope Francis’ Religious Capital and the Agency of the Poor”. Sociology, v53 (6), p. 1077-1993, Doi: 10.1177/0038038519853109
2018 ‘Lived Religion in Latin America’ in Miriam Diez Bosch, Alberto Melloni, Josep Lluís Micó Sanz, Perplexed Religions Barcelona, Blanquerna Observatory, p. 149-158.
https://obsblanquerna.com/perplexed-religion-obs9-3/
2018 “Latin America’s Contemporary Religious Imaginary”. Social Imaginaries v4. n2 p. 87-106
https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase26?openform&fp=si&id=si_2018_0004_0002_0087_0106
2017 “Introduction. Lived religion in Latin America and Europe. Roman Catholics and their practices” in Visioni LatinoAmericane, y. IX, n. 17, Luglio 2017. P. 13-23.
https://www.openstarts.units.it/server/api/core/bitstreams/b1498c39-4739-4f49-ab9a-9a9069760060/content
2017 “An Enchanted Modernity: Making sense of Latin America’s religious landscape” (with Catalina Romero, Hugo Rabbia and Nestor Da Costa) Critical Research on Religion, Vol 5, Issue 3, pp. 308 – 326.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2050303217732131
Modernity, Secularization and religious transformation in Latin AmericaThis is a title
Based on the findings of my research on religion and political violence in Argentina, I decided to focus on the reactions of religious institutions and individuals to secularization in the broader context of modernity, that is, the phenomenon of ‘secularization’. This was part of the theoretical outcome of my investigation: Catholics respond to political violence according to how they cope with the secularization process in a historical context.
I want to pose some questions about secularization theories to shed light on Latin American processes. To develop those questions, I privileged the qualitative research paradigm. The critical analysis allows me to shed light on the state of the art; the historical approach is fundamental to contextualize the social schemes and elucidate the hegemonic disputes in which actors are embedded; and the in-depth interviews allow me to hear the voices of ordinary believers and learn how they navigate the sacred and the secular in their daily lives.
Publications
Articles & book chapters:
2019 “Cambios religiosos y dinámicas demográficas: más allá de la Teoría de la Secularización. El caso del catolicismo en la ciudad de Córdoba, Argentina”. First author with Hugo H. Rabbia. Revista de Estudios Sociales 69: 14-27.
https://doi.org/10.7440/res69.2019.02
2018 ‘Catolicismo y modernidad latinoamericana. Una lectura desde Bolívar Echeverría’ in Horacio Crespo, Andrés Kozel, Alexander Betancourt (eds.) ¿Tienen las américas una historia común? Herbert E. Bolton, las fronteras y la “Gran América” Cuernavaca, México: Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos. p. 531-579
https://riaa.uaem.mx/xmlui/bitstream/handle/20.500.12055/1371/americas-historia-comun_compressed.pdf?sequence=1
2018 ‘Argentina’, in Henri Gooren (ed.), Encyclopedia on Latin American Religion, Springer, Cham. https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-319-27078-4_339
2017 ‘Transformation in Argentinean Catholicism, from the Second half of the Twentieth Century to Pope Francis, Jose Mapril, Ruy Blanes, Emerson Giumbelli, Erin Wilson (Ed.), Secularisms in a Postsecular Age? Religiosities and subjectivities in comparative perspective, Palgrave. 231-251
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-43726-2
2017 ‘It takes two to Tango’: The religious and the secular in Argentinean political dance. 1860-1960. Juan Vaggione (Ed.) Laicidad and Religious Diversity in Latin America Springer. 51-71
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-44745-2_4
2012 ‘Secularización social y formación del clero en la Córdoba de los años setenta’, en Gabriela Caretta – Isabel Zacca (compiladoras) Derroteros en la construcción de religiosidades. Sujetos, instituciones y poder en Sudamérica, siglos XVII al XX. CEPIHA-UNSTA-CONICET, Salta (Argentina), pp. 235-252.
https://www.unsta.edu.ar/derroteros-en-la-construccion-de-religiosidades/
2010 ‘Ciudadanos católicos en la ciudad postsecular’ en Los jesuitas formadores de ciudadanos. La educación dentro y fuera de sus colegios, siglos XVI-XXI, Coordinada por Perla Chinchilla, Departamento de Publicaciones, Universidad Iberamericana, México, p. 245-260.
https://perfiles.ibero.mx/es/publications/los-jesuitas-formadores-de-ciudadanos-la-educación-dentro-y-fuera/
2010 ‘Charles Taylor’s modernity in a Latin American Catholicism’ in Politics and the Religious Imagination, Editors: John Dyck, Paul Rowe, and Jens Zimmermann, Routledge, Routledge Studies in Religion and Politics, London and New York, p.143-159. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203849224-19/charles-taylor-modernity-latin-american-catholicism?context=ubx&refId=df44d756-5a0c-4bea-ab9a-c0898fd79df0
2009 ‘El barroco y la modernidad latinoamericana. Una lectura a la obra de Bolívar Echeverría’ en Sociedad, cultura y literatura, compilado por Carlos Arcos Cabrera, Flacso, Serie 50 años, (2009) Ecuador, p.421-436. ISBN 978-9978-67-207-5.
https://repositorio.flacsoandes.edu.ec/items/80aa10d6-38c1-4d93-9676-9d2bd273365d
2008 ‘Los jesuitas, el barroco y la modernidad latinoamericana en el pensamiento de Bolívar Echeverría’ en Ilustración y emancipación en América Latina. Materiales para la reflexión ético-política en el segundo centenario, Editores: Gustavo Ortiz y Nelson Specchia, Educc, Córdoba, Argentina, p.107-157. ISBN 978-987-626-023-7.
https://libros.ucc.edu.ar/productos/ilustracion-y-emancipacion-en-america-latina/
2008 ‘El catolicismo latinoamericano y la crisis de la modernidad occidental’, Temas (Cuba), 54, abril-junio: 105-113.
https://rebelion.org/docs/70875.pdf
2007 ‘Charles Taylor’s “Imaginary” and “Best Account” in Latin America’, Philosophy and Social Criticism, 33: 617-639.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0191453707074150
2006 ‘La teología jesuítica y el espíritu del Barroco. Una lectura de La modernidad de lo Barroco, de Bolívar Echeverría’, Studia Politicae, Córdoba (Argentina), 08 otoño, pp. 67-101.
https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/autor?codigo=1978999
Religion and violence
I was 18 years old when Argentina recovered its democracy and the first reports of missing people appeared. It was the time of the Dirty War in the country. Many people from the Church were accused of supporting perpetrators of human rights violations, and it was proved that some bishops denied help to the victims. I started working for a small left-wing political party at Córdoba’s National University, where I studied journalism. Most of my fellow students were left-wing and critical of what had happened in the country, and they did not understand how, after all, I could remain Catholic. For me, my faith was what made me concerned about social justice. What seemed particularly odd to others was that this marked the start of my calling as a Jesuit.
Christianism and Revolution
I explored the relationship between Catholicism and Marxism in the Sixties, the period when political violence began in Argentina’s contemporary history. The Montoneros were the most important guerrilla movement in Argentina’s history. Two key differences from traditional Marxist guerrillas were that the Montoneros never called for collective property and claimed to be building Jesus’ justice on earth. I used a mixed-methods approach to research the intellectual roots of this group. First, I conducted a content analysis of all 30 issues of the journal Cristianismo y Revolución (CyR), published between 1966 and 1971. I also interviewed the journal’s second director, Cassiana Ahumada. She was the wife of the first director, Juan García Elorrio, who was killed in 1970. I also conducted ten interviews with people active in the church during those years. Two of them were young Christian men who founded the Montoneros and took part in military actions.
Publications
Book:
2003 Cristianismo y Revolución. Los orígenes intelectuales de la guerrilla argentina. Córdoba, Editorial de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba (EDUCC)
https://libros.ucc.edu.ar/productos/cristianismo-y-revolucion/
Articles:
2013 ‘Christianity and Revolution. Catholicism and guerillas warfare in Argentina’s Seventies’ in The Journal of Religion and Violence, Vol, 1, # 1, p. 42-59.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26663868.pdf
2009 ‘Los católicos en el Cordobazo’, Reseñas de enseñanza de la historia, (Argentina) octubre # 7, p. 273-277.
https://revele.uncoma.edu.ar/index.php/resenas/es/article/view/3897
2007 ‘El Concilio Vaticano II y su Impacto en América Latina: a 40 Años de un cambio en los paradigmas en el catolicismo’, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, XLIX, 199, enero-abril: 81-104. https://www.revistas.unam.mx/index.php/rmcpys/article/view/42551/38658
2005 ‘Cristianismo y Revolución’, Istmo – Revista virtual de estudios literarios y culturales centroamericanos, # 10 enero – junio https://istmo.denison.edu/n10/articulos/cristianismo.html
2004 ‘20 años de democracia: La iglesia en Córdoba’ en Studia Politicae, Córdoba (Argentina) #02 verano, p 147-178. https://revistas.bibdigital.uccor.edu.ar/index.php/SP/article/view/401
Catholicism and Argentina’s State Terrorism
The research on the guerrillas put me at the verge of the Seventies. For my Ph.D. dissertation, I focused on the Catholic Church and its actions in response to state terror during Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’. Most authors take for granted that the Church collaborated with the Argentine military in the government’s mass killings. But a careful analysis of the sources (other research, documents, and testimonies) shows that Catholics held many different attitudes toward state terrorism. Some were accomplices; others remained silent, while still others were champions of human rights. However, the Argentinean church was not an impediment to human rights violations, as it was in Chile or Brazil. The situation was far more complex than a fight between conservative and progressive Catholics, though it was a clash of different religious conceptions. I explored how ordinary Catholics faced state terror, how they defined their positions for or against it, and how faith shaped that decision. I conducted a case study that allowed me to analyze in depth different Catholic positions on the same case. I analyzed the kidnapping of 5 seminarians and an American priest (all members of the La Salette congregation) in the city of Córdoba, who were tortured by soldiers who believed they were engaging in a “catholic mission” fighting communism. I conducted open-ended qualitative interviews with four of them, as well as 19 other interviews in Córdoba, Buenos Aires, La Habana, and Boston. I worked with archives in Córdoba, Buenos Aires, and Boston College.
Publications
Books:
2015 The Catholic Church and Argentina’s Dirty War, Oxford University Press, NY.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-catholic-church-and-argentinas-dirty-war-9780190947446?lang=en&cc=us
2014 Dónde estaba Dios? Los católicos y el terrorismo de estado, Ediciones B, Buenos Aires.
https://www.buscalibre.com.ar/libro-do-nde-estaba-dios-cato-licos-y-terrorismo-de-estado-en-la-argentina-de-los-setentas/9789501526042/p/47326530
Book Chapters:
2022 ‘Catholicism and State Terror in Argentina’ in Sara Brown and Stephen Smith, The Routledge Handbook of Religion, Genocide, and Mass Atrocity, Routledge, London.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Religion-Mass-Atrocity-and-Genocide/Brown-Smith/p/book/9781032122748
2016 ‘Transformations in Catholicism under Political Violence: Córdoba, Argentina, 1960-1980’ in Alex Wilde (Ed.) Religion and Violence in Latin America, Notre Dame.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.21995628.13?seq=1
2015 ‘Las transformaciones del catolicismo en situaciones de violencia política: Córdoba, Argentina, 1960-1980’ in Alexander Wilde (Ed.) Las Iglesias ante la violencia en América Latina. Los derechos humanos en el pasado y el presente, FLACSO Mexico. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt19dzdks.13?seq=1
2013 ‘Violencia política y terrorismo de Estado en cifras. Argentina, 1969-1983’ in Silvia Romero (ed.) Historias recientes de Córdoba. Política y derechos humanos en la segunda mitad del siglo XX, Córdoba, Editorial Filosofía y Humanidades- UNC, 2013. Argentina.
https://editoriales.facultades.unc.edu.ar/index.php/publicacionesffyh/catalog/view/171/206/3380
2010 ‘Los católicos cordobeses frente a la represión: El Caso La Salette’ en Catolicismo y política en Córdoba. Siglos XIX y XX Coordinadoras Gardenia Vidal y Jessica Blanco, Ferreyra Editores, Córdoba, Argentina.
Articles:
2018 “Catholic legitimization up for grabs: The political pluralization of Argentinean Catholicism in the 1960s” (First author with Fortunato Mallimaci) Journal of Contemporary Religion, v. 33, i. 3, p. 427-445. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13537903.2018.1535363
2014 Violencia política y catolicismo en Argentina. El secuestro de los Misioneros de La Salette, Revista Sendas, Guatemala. Año 2, Vol. 2.
2012 ‘Secularización y derechos humanos: Actores católicos entre la dictadura argentina (1976) y la administración Carter (1977-1979)’, Latin American Research Review, Vol., 47; n.3, p. 62-82.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/latin-american-research-review/article/secularizacion-y-derechos-humanos-actores-catolicos-entre-la-dictadura-argentina-1976-y-la-administracion-carter-19771979/0759BA9783415850CA47EA12F117EF10
2012 ‘Catholicism(s), State Terrorism and Secularization in Argentina’, Bulletin of Latin American Research Review, Vol. 31, n.3, pp. 366-380.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1470-9856.2011.00695.x
2011 ‘El terrorismo de estado y el catolicismo en Argentina: el caso de los Misioneros de La Salette’, Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas/Anuario de Historia de América Latina, vol. 48
https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/abs/10.7767/jbla.2011.48.1.285