Leonard J. DeLorenzo, Ph.D.

Leonard J. DeLorenzo, Ph.D. is professor of the practice in the McGrath Institute for Church Life and a concurrent professor in the Department of Theology and in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. For more than two decades, he has built and scaled programs from conception to lasting institution. He specializes in faith, character, and leadership formation, from the early teenage years through executive education.

 

DeLorenzo directed Notre Dame Vision for thirteen years, more than doubling participation and making it financially self-sustaining, and he later led the institute’s strategic planning. He is founding director of the Sullivan Family Saints Initiative and of the Inklings Project, an intercollegiate fellowship whose first three cohorts brought together faculty from thirty-five institutions in nine countries. He is also creator and host of the institute’s podcast, Church Life Today.

 

In 2025, he co-founded Trinity Academy South Bend, a classical Christian school for grades 6–12, by forming a new nonprofit corporation to continue an educational mission of more than forty years. As founding board chair and acting president, he led the school from incorporation to opening day in under six months.

 

He is the author of eleven books, including Work of Love: A Theological Reconstruction of the Communion of Saints (University of Notre Dame Press, 2017) and, most recently, The Rule of the Sacred Heart (OSV, 2026). He teaches theology to undergraduate and graduate students, leads the multi-year executive formation course for Mendoza’s Executive MBA program, and speaks frequently at diocesan and national conferences.

 

He holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame, beginning with his B.A. in theology and philosophy in 2003 and concluding with his Ph.D. in theology in 2014. He lives in South Bend with his wife, Lisa ’04, ’08 M.Div., and their children.