John P. Falcone Ph.D.

John Falcone grew up in the Bronx in a Southern Italian working-class family. After a post-undergrad year at St. Louis Effort for AIDS in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (the "four pillars" of JVC are community living, simple lifestyle, spirituality, and social justice), he became a social worker and then got his master's degree in ministry. He became a religion teacher and campus minister at inner-city Catholic high schools, including Cristo Rey New York — where kids from low-income families combine classroom learning with professional education (working at entry-level, white-collar jobs for five days each month in order to pay for their college prep education).

With a Ph.D. in theology and education, he has taught graduate and undergraduate ministry in the U.S. and in the United Kingdom. During the COVID lockdown, he founded LectioEast, which creates online and in-person experiences of "lectio visceralis" (Ignatian reflection, improvised movement, and liberation-oriented prayer). He has been involved in critical pedagogy and community-based ministry (LGBT, working class, youth work) for many years — as a teacher, a community organizer, and as a trainer/practitioner of Theatre of the Oppressed, where improvisational theatre meets critical social analysis.

Interested in creative ritual, or activist art-making? Let's talk!

• Ph.D., theology and education, Boston College
• M.Div., ministry, biblical studies, and education, Union Theological Seminary, New York
• B.A., classical languages, Fordham University

• Unit staff (social worker), Independence Center, St. Louis, Missouri
• Campus minister, St. Catherine Academy, Bronx, New York
• Founding religion faculty and campus minister, Cristo Rey High School New York, Spanish Harlem, New York
• Pastoral assistant and children's worker, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom
• Visiting assistant professor, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York
• Lecturer, St. Augustine's Theological College, Kent, United Kingdom
• Ford Visiting Professor of Practical Theology, San Francisco Theological Seminary, University of Redlands Marin Campus

• Falcone, John P., and Davis Mac-Iyalla. "Drinking from Our Own Wells in Ghana: Interfaith Education, Civic Engagement, and Resisting the Anti-LGBT Agenda." British Journal of Religious Education (2024): 1–11. doi:10.1080/01416200.2024.2305859.
• Falcone, John P. "Lectio Visceralis — Embodied, Online Worship: Praying, Learning and Liberation in the Flesh at BIAPT 2022." Practical Theology 16, no. 3 (2023): 384–396.
• Falcone, John P. "Body and Spirit Together: Theatre of the Oppressed, Pragmatist Semiotics, and Practical Theological Method." ARTS: Society for the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies 30, no. 1 (2018): 57–71.
• Falcone, John P. "Peirce, Pragmatism, and Religious Education: Participating More Deeply in God's Imagination." Religious Education 111, no. 4 (July/September 2016): 381–397.
• Falcone, John P. "Training Lay People to 'Practice' Scripture Rhetorically: A Pedagogical Model with Biblical Precedent and Warrant from the Gospel of Matthew." Journal of Adult Theological Education 13, no. 1 (2016): 4–17.
• Falcone, John P. "Do Not Quench the Spirit: Rainbow Ministry and Queer Ritual Practice in Catholic Education and Life." In More than a Monologue: Sexual Diversity in the Catholic Church, vol. I, Voices of Our Times, edited by Christine Firer Hinze and J. Patrick Hornbeck II, 114–123. New York: Fordham University Press, 2014.