My name is Magnus Lundberg (b. 1972) and I’m Professor of Church and Mission History at the Department of Theology, Uppsala University, Sweden. Though I teach World Christianity and Church History more broadly, my own research is focused on modern Catholic traditionalism, Fringe Catholicism, and modern alternative popes. Earlier, my primary focus was on Latin American church history.
Contact Details
Magnus Lundberg
Department of Theology
P.O. Box 511
SE-751 20 Uppsala
Sweden/Suecia
Curriculum Vitae
University Degrees
Doctor of Theology, Lund University, June 2002.
Licentiate of Theology, Lund University, April 2000.
Archival Science (one year’s full-time studies), Department of History, Stockholm University, August 1999 – June 2000.
Bachelor of Theology, Lund University, January 1997.
Bachelor of Philosophy, Lund University, November 1996.
Academic Positions
Professor of Church and Mission Studies/Mission History, Department of Theology, Uppsala University, Jan 2016-.
Acting Professor of Church History, Department of Theology, Uppsala University, Jan 2016-June 2020.
Associate Professor (Universitetslektor/Docent), Church and Mission Studies (permanent position), Department of Theology, Uppsala University, April 2010-Jan 2016.
Researcher (Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation), Department of Theology, Uppsala University, July 2010-April 2014
Assistant Professor (Universitetslektor), Church and Mission Studies, Department of Theology, Uppsala University, October 2007- April 2010.
Researcher (Swedish Research Council), Department of Theology, Uppsala University, July 2006-December 2008, July 2009-December 2009.
Assistant Professor, Mission Studies (substitute), Department of Theology, Uppsala University, February 2004-June 2006.
Guest Professor, Centro de Estudios de las Tradiciones, Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora, Mexico, November 2002 – April 2003.
Academic Assignments
Chairperson, Church History and Mission History (ämneskollegieordförande), January 2020-January 2022
Editor of the Book Series Uppsala Studies in Church History, January 2017-
Director of Studies, PhD level, Department of Theology, Uppsala University, January 2010-June 2017.
Director, Forum for Latin American Studies, Uppsala University, January 2014-December 2015.
Chairperson, Church and Mission Studies (ämnesområdeskollegieordförande), Department of Theology, Uppsala University, July 2011-June 2014.
Director of Studies, Euroculture Master Programme, Uppsala University, January 2009-August 2010.
Editor of SMT: Swedish Missiological Themes/Svensk Missionstidskrift, January 2004-December 2008.
Research Abroad
Canada, 2019. Chile, 2011. Costa Rica, 2005. Curaçao 2024. Ecuador, 2013. Ethiopia, 2006. Great Britain, 2006-2007. Guatemala, 1995. Italy, 2018. Mexico, 2000-2001, 2002-2003, 2007, 2008, 2009. Nicaragua, 1993, 1994, 1995, 2000-2001, 2005. Peru, 2013. Saba-St. Maarten-St. Eustatius, 2025. Spain, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2006, 2013, 2019. Suriname, 2023. USA, 2001.
Guest Professor, Centro de Investigaciones sobre América Latina y el Caribe, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, September-October 2009.
Guest Professor, Centro de Estudios de las Tradiciones, Colegio de Michoacán, Zamora, Mexico, November 2002 – April 2003.
Research Interests
Contemporary Catholic Dissenter Groups
Alternative Popes
Mariology and Marian Apparitions
Apocalypticism in Catholic and Evangelical traditions
Latin American Church and Mission History
Current Research Projects
Currently, I conduct research on several quite different subjects. One of my main projects concerns what I call Modern Alternative Popes, i.e., men who claim that they, and not the man in Rome, are the true pope. From the 1910s onwards, there have been more than forty such claimants, almost all after the 1950s. The majority claim that they have been elected directly by God. Others have been elected in alternative conclaves. Some of these popes have had many thousands of adherents, e.g., Clément XV of the Renewed Church (Clémery, France), Jean-Grégoire XVII of the Apostles of Infinite Love (Saint-Jovite, Canada), and the four popes of the Palmarian Church (Palmar de Troya, Spain). Others have had a much smaller number of followers.
A related project is devoted to the New Jerusalem Church of the Celestial Messenger, a religious group founded in Chicago in the 1910s and led by Italian-American Giuseppe Maria Abbate (1886-1963), a.k.a. the Celestial Messenger or the Celestial Father. Abbate believed that he was the reincarnation of Christ. By analyzing extensive, previously unknown archival material, I attempt to provide a broad study of the religious group during the Celestial Messenger’s life and after his death, when independent Catholic bishops led the congregation.
Finished Major Research Projects
In 2015, I completed the research project Mission and Ecstasy: Contemplative women’s role in the mission in colonial Latin America (2010-2014), financed by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. The main objective of the project was to study the roles of Spanish-American and Filipino contemplative women in the Catholic mission during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This group includes both nuns and beatas, recogidas and donadas, who did not take formal vows but lived nun-like lives.
In colonial Latin America, missionary work was above all the task of male religious specialists. Spanish-American and Filipino contemplative women’s more indirect role in the mission is an almost unexplored area. This role included methods such as prayer and vicarious suffering, but also “travels in spirit” to the mission fields. The sources are numerous. Above all, these are autobiographical texts that individual women wrote on the instigation of their confessors or hagiographies that churchmen wrote about them. Most of these sources are available in the Spanish, Mexican, and Chilean national libraries, as well as in the John Carter Brown Library.
On the one hand, the source material presented a female religious ideal built on silence, obedience, chastity, and a radical detachment (enclosure). Still, on the other hand, there were often very far-reaching claims of spiritual authority and stories about activities that were at least on the border of what church authorities could accept. My study can help to further problematise the relationship between apostolic and contemplative religious life.
I have also completed the research project Religion in the borderland: Resistance, adaptation and dialogue in colonial Mexico (2006-2009), which was funded by the Swedish Research Council. The goal of this project was to study the relationship between parish priests and indigenous (above all Nahuatl-speaking) parishioners in the Archdiocese of Mexico and the diocese of Puebla during the first half of the seventeenth century. My goal was also to study the relationship between ecclesiastical norm and their applications on the parish level. For this project, I used manuscripts and printed materials from the Archivo General de Indias in Seville, the British Library, the Archivo General de la Nación in Mexico City, and several other Mexican archives and libraries. Apart from a few articles in English, Spanish, and Swedish, I have written a monograph entitled Church Life Between the Metropolitan and the Local: Parishes, Parishioners and Parish Priests in Seventeenth-Century Mexico (Orlando, FL: Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2011).
My doctoral dissertation, from Lund University in 2002, also deals with Mexican church history. A Spanish translation of a revised and expanded version was published in 2009. The thesis is a thematic biography of Alonso de Montúfar, Archbishop of Mexico between 1554 and 1572. It mainly deals with discussions during this time about how to organize the early Mexican Church. Should the church in Mexico be organized in precisely the same way as in Spain, or did the so-called New World require new methods? The thesis was entitled Unification and Conflict: The Church Politics of Alonso de Montufar OP, Archbishop of Mexico, 1554-1572 (Uppsala: Swedish Institute of Missionary Research, 2002). The Spanish translation made by Professor Alberto Carrillo Cazares called Unificación y conflicto: La Gestión Episcopal de Alonso de Montufar OP, arzobispo de México, 1554-1572 (Zamora, Mich .: Colegio de Michoacán, 2009)
Magnus Lundberg 
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