Essays by Ilia Delio

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Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD, is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC, and an American theologian specializing in the area of science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics, and neuroscience and the import of these for theology.

Ilia currently holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University and is the author of twenty books, including "Care for Creation" (coauthored with Keith Warner and Pamela Woods), which won two Catholic Press Book Awards in 2009: first place for social concerns and second place in spirituality.

Her book "The Emergent Christ" won a third-place Catholic Press Book Award in 2011 for the area of Science and Religion. Her recent books include "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love" (Orbis, 2013), which received the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a third-place Catholic Press Association Award for Faith and Science. Ilia holds two honorary doctorates, one from St. Francis University in 2015, and one from Sacred Heart University in 2020.

Learn more about Sr. Ilia and her publications.

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Evolution and Radical Love

Many people ask, why is it necessary to pay attention to science? What does religion have to do with science? Historically, the foundations of modern science are found in the…

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Can A Thinking Heart Make Us Whole?

The volatility of the news is a good indicator of the unstable forces that are impacting our world today. A drop of 850 points on the NASDAQ and it seems…

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Schism or Evolution?

Something momentous is happening in our midst. The concerted efforts to oust Pope Francis are deeply tied to the perverted crisis of abuse embedded in ecclesiastical power structures.  While some…

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Death In The Church: Is New Life Ahead?

The recent disclosure of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church and the extent of depravity reported in the news is symptomatic of a Church in crisis.  It is no longer…

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Towards a renewal of the whole

We are living on a fragile planet right now. The forces of resistance are felt all around us as we seek to hold on to our personal wealth, privileged security,…

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Teilhard de chardin: a big thinker for a big universe

The great medievalist scholar Etienne Gilson once wrote of Bonaventure: “You can either see the general economy of his doctrine in its totality, or see none of it, nor would…