Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice

Edmund Ignatius Rice, F.P.M., C.F.C. (Irish: Éamonn Iognáid Rís; 1 June 1762 – 29 August 1844) was a Catholic missionary and educationalist who founded two institutes of religious brothers: the Congregation of Christian Brothers and the Presentation Brothers. Rice was born in Ireland at a time when Catholics faced oppression under Penal Laws enforced by the British authorities, though reforms began in 1778 when he was a teenager. He forged a successful career in business and, after an accident that killed his wife and left his daughter disabled and with learning difficulties, devoted his life to the education of the poor. Christian Brothers and Presentation Brothers schools around the world continue to follow the traditions established by Rice (see List of Christian Brothers schools). Edmund Ignatius Rice was born to Robert Rice and Margaret Rice (née Tierney) on the farming property of "Westcourt", in Callan, County Kilkenny. Edmund Rice was the fourth of seven sons, although he also had two half-sisters, Joan and Jane Murphy, the offspring of his mother's first marriage. Rice's education, like that of every other Irish Catholic of the day, was greatly compromised by the 1709 amendment to the Popery Act, which decreed that any public or private instruction in the Catholic faith would render teachers liable to prosecution, a measure that was not reformed until 1782. In that environment, hedge schools proliferated. The boys of the Rice family obtained education at home through Patrick Grace, a member of the small community of Augustinian friars in Callan. As a young man, Rice spent two years at a school which, despite the provisions of the penal laws, the authorities suffered to exist in the City of Kilkenny. His uncle Michael owned a merchant business in the nearby port town of Waterford.