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.

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.

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."

MCC had been founded in 1968 as "the world's first church group with a primary, positive ministry to gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender persons."

Sirico was ordained a Pentecostal minister and established a healing ministry in Seattle around 1970/71.

He became very popular and gained the support of several charismatic churches in the area.

A foundation was established for the financial support of his ministry.

During this time, according to Sirico, he believed that homosexuality was condemned by the Bible as a perversion.

However, he soon found it "impossible" to heal a person from being gay.

He eventually made a public announcement that he was gay himself and intended to form a church for gays.

This led to him losing the support of his healing ministry's backers.

"I believe that my activities in the 1970s, though representing a very different political and theological stance to the ones I hold today, nonetheless help me to understand the complex issues that go into the debate 'gay marriage,'" he wrote.

"These insights have also been helpful in my pastoral work with persons who have same-sex attractions and have given me a greater sensitivity into the struggle to live a chaste life."

In the early part of the decade, Sirico held Left-leaning political and economic views, even becoming involved with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden and their Campaign for Economic Democracy.

However, after reading Friedrich von Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom, he became a libertarian.

In 1972, Sirico founded Seattle's Metropolitan Community Church, which primarily ministered to gays.

The church became a member of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC).

In April 1973, Sirico and the MCC picketed the Seattle Police Department, claiming there was a "vendetta" by the Seattle Police Department against homosexuals.

In October 1973, Sirico was arrested in Seattle for "walking in the roadway" after crossing the street to come to the aid of a gay man he saw was being arrested.

In jail, Sirico was reportedly singing "We Shall Overcome" until he was bailed out by a parishioner.

The citation was later struck down at trial and Sirico was let off with a warning by the judge.

In July 1973, Sirico went to lead the newly founded Metropolitan Church of Cincinnati.

Sirico was a proponent of gay marriage and performed same-sex marriages as a Protestant minister.

In 1975, Sirico performed the first gay marriage in the history of Colorado at the First Unitarian Church in Denver.

Sirico left Seattle for Los Angeles, where he became the director of the Los Angeles Gay Community Center.

In 1976, police conducted a raid at one of the center's events, a "male slave auction."

Sirico stated the event was merely a fundraiser for the center and that the police raided it in order to "discredit the image of gay people in this community for legislative gains."

Charges against the arrested were later dropped.

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.

In 2010, Sirico addressed his activities in a written response to questions posed to him by a National Catholic Reporter writer.

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.