Professor Emeritus, Theology and Religious Studies
Orlando O. Espín is Emeritus Professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego, where he taught for three decades. He earned (1984) a dual doctorate in systematic and practical theology at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. One among the handful of theologians who began U.S. Latinoax theology, Espín has specialized in the study of "popular" religions, and in the theological study of culture and traditioning. He is author or editor of twelve books (including his The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism, Idol and Grace: On Traditioning and Subversive Hope, Grace and Humanness: Theological Reflections Because of Culture, and Pentecost at Tepeyac). He edited the comprehensive Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Latino/a/x Theology, and is preparing a much enlarged and updated second edition of the Companion. Espín also co-edited the award-winning Introductory Dictionary of Theology and Religious Studies. He has published over 450 articles in U.S., European and Latin American professional journals, and more than 25 book chapters. He has received several national and international awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award from La Comunidad of Latinx Scholars in Religion, ACHTUS' Virgilio Elizondo Award, the 2016 John Courtney Murray Award from the Catholic Theological Society of America, an honorary doctorate and an honorary professorship. He was honored in 2001 as one of the “outstanding Catholic theologians in the world" at the start of the third millennium, by Germany's Missio Institute of Missiology "for groundbreaking theoretical work on popular Catholicism."