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.

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.

"[independent source needed] 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.

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.

"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.

What most people find surprising isn't that I was once a card-carrying lefty but that, despite my background, I somehow ended up as a passionate defender of the free economy, of liberty and limited government, of a traditional understanding of culture and morality, of all of those things that America's Founders held dear and that our country is now in danger of losing.

He "witnessed Clare Boothe Luce contending with Jack Kemp and Bill Bennett on the meaning of virtue; heard Irving Kristol, the godfather of neo-conservatism, and his wife Gertrude Himmelfarb, the historian and Victorian scholar, recount their own intellectual journeys from socialism; and became acquainted with Charles Krauthammer, Bob and Mary Ellen Bork and Charles Murray.

"Those wide-ranging debates on economics and politics, art and literature and just about everything in between, modeled an open and informed discussion prompted by intellectual curiosity and civility, sadly lacking in the present public discourse.

Those evenings were like a graduate seminar featuring some of the finest minds in the country at the time and in many ways formed a kind of proto-Acton Institute and served as a good model for its eventual founding.

[7] In Sirico's words: The essential thing was my frustration when I was in seminary ... to hear homilies preached that inevitably insulted business people.

[7] As noted in a 2017 essay in The Wall Street Journal: "When the Acton Institute was founded in 1990, America was in a heyday of harmonious thinking about capitalism and Christian values.

Catholic intellectuals such as Michael Novak, Richard John Neuhaus, and George Weigel gained renown for defending economic freedom.

Novak described the ideal Christian economic creed as "ordered liberty": a system that acknowledges the risks of consumerism and competition and mitigates them with a moral culture rather than state regulation.

Drawing on a series of interviews with leaders and entrepreneurs in developing nations on the economic challenges they face — from unpredictable or unjust legal systems to the way in which Western aid often undermines local businesses and sustains corrupt governments — he argues that Western nations need to reject neocolonial assumptions in favor of solutions that "call on the capacities of the poor.

An author-priest and public figure now, he learned some lessons the hard way in the '70s, when he spent his time picketing for Leftist causes with 'jean-clad, Birkenstocked, and patchouli-oil scented comrades.'"

According to The Wall Street Journal: "For Father Sirico, maintaining a local focus has offered an ideal opportunity to put Acton's values to work.

In 2013, he embarked on a mission to revitalize the then-dwindling Sacred Heart Academy, the school at the Grand Rapids parish where he serves as pastor.

The reforms have driven a fourfold increase in enrollment in as many years, a small but solid victory for the mixture of faith and unencumbered industry Father Sirico preaches at Acton.

[45][46] In November 2009, Sirico signed the "Manhattan Declaration," an ecumenical statement issued by Christian leaders in defense of the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, and religious liberty.

[47][48][49] The following year, in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter, Sirico stated the "Manhattan Declaration and its section on marriage reasonably expresses my view of the matter today and as well as outlining what I see as a needed and balanced concern that emerges from my own past my experience of having advocated positions opposed to those of the Church when I was outside her fold.

It would, as the Manhattan Declaration states, "lock into place the false and destructive belief that marriage is all about romance and other adult satisfactions, and not, in any intrinsic way, about procreation and the unique character and value of acts and relationships whose meaning is shaped by their aptness for the generation, promotion and protection of life.

According to Sirico, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops ignored the subsidiarity principle when it advocated for a federal tax credit for parents who send their children to parochial schools.

"[53] He prefaces these comments by writing: "In my work as a pastor of an inner-city Catholic parish that also boasts K–12 and preschool programs, I witness daily the sacrifices parents and guardians willingly make to provide their children with the classical culture and education that permeates our curricula.

Public schools mired in administrative and bureaucratic growth are perpetually stuck in neutral when it comes to adequately preparing many if not most students as they pursue their passions."