Skip to main content
Department of Sociology Sociology
  1. HOME
  2. People
  3. Graduate Students
  4. Lucas Sharma

Lucas Sharma

PhD Candidate, degree anticipated Spring 2028

John Hayden Doctoral Dissertation Fellow, Georgetown University

Lucas Sharma, S.J. is a PhD candidate in sociology at UC San Diego specializing in religion, gender, and sexuality. His research focuses on LGBTQ+ Catholics. Lucas’s dissertation is a interview-based comparative study of gay and lesbian cisgender former and practicing Catholics. The project examines how and why people left the Church as well as their relationship to Catholicism today. For those who stay Catholic, the project explores how these gay and lesbian Catholics forge their identities today, cultivate LGBTQ+ Catholic community in their parishes, and imagine the future of LGBTQ+ inclusion and belonging within the Catholic Church.

Lucas is also a Jesuit priest of the Jesuits West Province and recipient of the John Hayden Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship at Georgetown University where he also works as the Pastoral Associate in Georgetown’s LGBTQ Resource Center.

Curriculum Vitae

 

MDiv: Divinity, Santa Clara University, 2022
M.A.: Philosophy, Fordham University, 2017
M.A.: Sociology, Loyola University Chicago, 2012
B.A.: Sociology (with Honors) and Economics, 2009
        summa cum laude

 

Recent Publications:

2025 Online First. “Taking Francis’ Pastoral Approach: Catholic Priests’ Approval of Pope Francis and Attitudes on Lay Same-Sex Behavior and Homosexual Clergy.” Sociology of Religion. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sraf024.

      Paper received 2024 Graduate Unpublished Student Paper Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion

      Focus of September 19, 2025 article “Leo’s embrace of Francis’ LGBTQ+ acceptance follows surprising new study on priests,” National Catholic Reporter.

 

  1. “Forming Consciences into Collective Parish Actions: Catholic Parishioners’ Struggles for Institutional Change.” Review of Religious Research 66(4):354-375. https://doi.org/10.1177/0034673X241233590.

 

Research Interests: Religion, Gender, Sexuality, and Culture, Catholicism, Philosophy of Michel Foucault