The Famous Grand Rapids Priest With a "Sopranos” Connection

It sounds odd, but an epic TV show about gangsters has a Michigan connection, and it’s a real-life Catholic priest. A very famous one.

“The Sopranos” ran for six glorious seasons on HBO, from 1999 to 2007, telling the tale of a fictional mob family from New Jersey run by Tony Soprano. It’s the greatest TV series of all time, and you’re free to disagree and be wrong, but nothing has really come close.

And here’s the Michigan connection: One of the stars of the show, and one of the most memorable characters, was Paulie Walnuts, the vain, violent, old-school gangster who had gray wings in his hair and always wore track suits. Paulie Walnuts was played by Tony Sirico, a Brooklyn-born tough guy who was a real-life criminal before becoming an actor.

Tony was the black sheep of the family. The golden child was his little brother, Father Robert Sirico, who went on to become a Catholic priest and has been living for more than three decades in Grand Rapids.

He’s not just any Catholic priest, either. He’s famous one. After starting his religious life as a liberal Pentecostal minister in Seattle and Los Angeles, where he hung around with the likes of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden, he became ordained as a Catholic priest in 1989 and swung way to the other side of the political spectrum.

He was sent to Michigan, where he became the priest at parishes in Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo, and in 1990, he co-founded the Acton Institute, a conservative think tank whose mission is “promoting a free and virtuous society” by blending economics and religion.

The Acton Institute has become a major player in national politics and policy, and Father Sirico has become its most notable spokesman. In that role, he’s on TV all the time (particularly on Fox News), he’s published books, and he’s written op-eds in almost every major newspaper in the country. All while living and working in Michigan.

And for those of us “Sopranos” fans who live in Michigan, it’s pretty damn cool knowing that Paulie’s real-life brother is one of us. I’m always looking for Michigan connections to my favorite TV shows (such as discovering that George Wendt from “Cheers” spent every summer at Stony Lake), so I loved being able to research Michigan’s link to “The Sopranos.”

One thing that I discovered is that Tony Sirico, who passed away in 2022, used to come to Michigan all the time to visit his little brother. One of those visits came in 2010, when the Acton Institute was celebrating its 20th anniversary with a big bash at the JW Marriott Hotel in Grand Rapids.

The evening’s keynote speaker was its co-founder, Father Robert Sirico. To introduce him that night, they invited his big brother. Tony told tales of growing up on the rough streets of New York with his little brother, and how that shaped both of their lives.

“We were born in Brooklyn. Tough streets, even back then,” Tony said. “But a good training ground for acting. And I guess it was even a good training for the kind of tough priest my kid brother turned out to be. One who ain’t afraid to tell the politicians to keep their hands out of our pockets and their regulations off your business. Bada bing. That's my brother, Robert.”

Tony told a few more stories and then gave Robert a huge hug when he came to the stage. A wonderful moment for the Sirico brothers on a hotel stage in Grand Rapids.

“Can you imagine the discomfort, the things you have to go through to express yourself at a holiday dinner with your brother Robert sitting there? I mean, if I can't curse, I can't talk,” Tony said.

The story of the Sirico brothers is a fascinating one all the way around, even without the Michigan connection. Tony was the oldest boy in the family and Robert was the youngest, and they had two other siblings, Carmine and Carol. Robert was nine years younger than Tony, so they didn’t hang around much as kids, and as soon as Tony was able to strike out on his own, he did.

And for the most part, it didn’t go well. He did a little bit of boxing on the side, but he mostly committed crimes. Assault, robbery, extortion, a little of everything. By the time he was in his late 20s, he had been arrested 28 times and served more than two years in prison.

“I was a pistol-packing guy,” he said in a 1990 interview. “The first time I went away to prison, they searched me to see if I had a gun—and I had three of ‘em on me. They’d ask why I was carrying and I’d say I live in a bad neighborhood. It was true. In our neighborhood, if you weren’t carrying a gun, it was like you were the rabbit during rabbit-hunting season.”

Tony eventually saw the light thanks to a theater troupe that came to Sing Sing prison, where he was doing a stretch.

“I watched ‘em and I thought, ‘I can do that.’ I knew I wasn’t bad looking,” he said. “And I knew I had the (guts) to stand up and (B.S.) people. You get a lot of practice in prison. I used to stand up in front of these cold-blooded murderers and kidnappers—and make ‘em laugh.”

When he got out, he embarked on an acting career that saw him mostly playing bad guys (including a mobster in “Goodfellas”), but with a couple of cop roles thrown in as well. His biggest break came in 1999, when he became Paulie Walnuts on “The Sopranos.” In the annals of mobster roles, that made him a legend.

His little brother, meanwhile, began his religious odyssey in the 1970s, starting out as a West Coast liberal before becoming a Midwest conservative.

Tony and Robert became quite close as adults. And if you’re thinking there’s a parallel between the Sirico brothers in real life and the characters in the 1938 gangster movie “Angels With Dirty Faces,” you aren’t alone.

In the movie, Jimmy Cagney and Pat O’Brien play boyhood friends who go in different directions after committing a crime as kids. Jimmy Cagney’s character (Rocky) is caught, and he goes on to become a gangster. Pat O’Brien’s character (Jerry) gets away, and he becomes a priest.

Art imitating life, right? Or life imitating art? That’s the way Tony Sirico saw it. When he introduced Robert at the 2010 event in Grand Rapids, he made the comparison himself.

“For those of you who've never seen it, it's about these two kids that grow up in this neighborhood, and one day they steal some fruit from a fruit vendor and they get chased by the cops,” Tony said.

“Rocky turns to a life of crime and Jerry becomes a priest. Well, all my life I've always thought that wherever there's a Rocky Sullivan, there should always be a Father Jerry, no? Anyway, tonight I want to introduce my Father Jerry, my brother, Father Robert Sirico.”

When Tony passed away in 2022, the Sirico brothers were as close as could be. It was Father Robert who had the solemn task of performing the funeral service at the Basilica of Regina Pacis in Brooklyn.

During the homily, Father Robert shared that shortly before he passed away, Tony agreed to a confession, and his brother, the priest, absolved him of all his sins.

“My friends, if Paulie Walnuts can steal heaven, so can you and I,” he told the mourners.

Rest in peace, Tony. And thanks for spending so much of your time with us.