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

This combination photo shows Pope Leo XIV at the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, May 11, 2025, left, and President Donald Trump during an event in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, May 12, 2025, in Washington. (AP photo)

Leo and Trump offer 2 American visions of power: Which one will endure?

In a wounded, polarized world, "people are not merely asking for efficiency or strength," writes Stan Chu IIo. "They are searching for leadership that can heal, rehumanize and sow hope where cynicism has taken root."

A newspaper with an article reporting U.S. President Donald Trump's message to Nigeria over the treatment of Christians hangs at a newspaper stand in Ojuelegba, Lagos, Nigeria. Nov. 2, 2025. (OSV News/Reuters/Sodiq Adelakun)

Trump and America cannot save Nigerian Christians — and this is why

The U.S. cannot heal Nigeria because it has not yet healed itself. The loudest champions of freedom abroad have allowed fear and resentment to corrode freedom at home.

This is a combination of Pope Leo XIV looking out to the crowd from St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican as he leads the "Regina Coeli" prayer for the first time May 11, 2025, and St. Augustine of Hippo depicted in this stained-glass art in Winnipeg, Manitoba. (OSV News photos/CNS photo/Crosiers/Lola Gomez)

African theologian reads 'Dilexi Te' through lens of Augustine's totus Christus

In a theological reflection, Stan Chu Ilo reads Pope Leo XIV's first apostolic exhortation through St. Augustine's theology of the totus Christus — the whole Christ, head and body.

Young people use their cellphone lights during a vigil at Orem City Center Park in Utah Sept. 11 after U.S. conservative activist and commentator Charlie Kirk, 31, was fatally shot during a Sept. 10 event at Utah Valley University in Orem. (OSV News/Reuters/Jim Urquhart)

American Catholicism at the crossroads in the face of rising political violence

Faith communities — especially the Catholic Church, with its deep intellectual and social gospel tradition — can play a decisive role in shifting the culture of discourse.

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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