The Rhythms of Faith podcast hosts Father Joachim Osunze, a Nigerian priest and PhD candidate at Notre Dame's Kroc Institute, who discusses his research on how individuals and communities are socialized into violence and how Christian rituals might disrupt these cycles. He describes how watching videos of young drug users being publicly scourged in Southeast Nigeria haunted him and redirected his research from post–civil war legacies to the drug crisis, which he uses as a lens for understanding deeper structures of violence. Through ethnographic fieldwork—companioning drug users, sellers, and vigilante groups, and drawing on the Igbo concept of ifunanya (love as mutual seeing)—he explores how violence is inscribed on bodies and how healing can be a form of rewriting. His time at Homeboy Industries' tattoo removal program became a powerful metaphor for how violence is written on the body and how healing involves negotiation, family, and re-inscription. The conversation also examines the complex relationship between liturgy and culture—including the colonial implications of naming practices in baptism—and closes with Fr. Joachim reflecting on the beauty of being human.
0:00 - \"Welcome & Research Overview\"
2:14 - \"Encountering the Drug Crisis\"
5:15 - \"The Call Within the Call\"
8:19 - \"Companionship & Ifunanya\"
10:47 - \"Homeboy Industries & Facing Fear\"
14:31 - \"Seeing God & the Meaning of a Name\"
24:26 - \"Generational Violence, Tattoos & Healing\"
29:01 - \"Liturgy, Culture & Being Human\"
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