Research team
Expertise
Leonardo Rossi is a postdoc researcher at the Ruusbroec Institute, Antwerp University (Belgium), specialising in religious studies, particularly the history of Italian Catholicism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. His research focuses on popular devotions, religious beliefs and practices, aspiring mystics, and 'living saints' worshipped by 'ordinary people' but potentially contested by ecclesiastical and/or civil authorities. His academic work primarily explores: Mystical phenomena and manifestations of the supernatural (stigmata, ecstasies, Marian apparitions, apocalyptic prophecies). Canonical and non-canonical devotional practices and "popular cults" directed at charismatic figures and "living saints". Dynamics of control and negotiation among the faithful, local ecclesiastical hierarchies, and Vatican dicasteries (with particular reference to the Holy Office). Materiality of the sacred and embodied religiosity within the contemporary Catholic context (relics, prodigious and 'incorrupt' bodies, reliquary sculptures of early Christian martyrs, papal funeral rituals in the late modern period).