Robert Sirico

Robert Alan Sirico (born June 23, 1951) is an American Catholic priest and the founder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is a political, religious, and cultural commentator. He is also the retired pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Grand Rapids. Early life and education Sirico was raised in an Italian Catholic family in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, (in both Bensonhurst and East Flatbush) but by his early teenage years, he had left the Church. He received an associate's degree from Los Angeles City College, studied at St. Mary's University College, London, and received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Southern California. Sirico holds dual Italian and American citizenship. His older brother was actor Tony Sirico. Writing in the Acton Institute's 2018 Winter edition of its Religion & Liberty quarterly publication, Sirico said growing up in Brooklyn caused him to develop a late appreciation of nature, which only took hold after he moved to the West Coast. His move West happened during what he called "The Great Environmental Awakening of the 1960s and 70s". Sirico's environmental concerns became one of the missions of the Acton Institute: "Our mission at the Acton Institute often attempts to bridge the divide between the extremists of pantheism and those who would seek profit at any cost to the environment. It is our goal to celebrate human flourishing while recognizing that it's not mutually exclusive with God's call for us to be conscientious environmental stewards." A deeper study of the Christian anthropology led to his return to the Catholic Church in 1977, and later to the writings of St. Augustine. The biography of St. John Henry Newman moved him to consider the priesthood. He received an MDiv from The Catholic University of America in 1987 and was ordained a Paulist priest in 1989. He was assigned to the Catholic Information Center in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and soon thereafter founded the Acton Institute.