Monsignor Charles Owen Rice (1908-2005)

Monsignor Charles Owen Rice was a Roman Catholic priest and an American labor activist.He was born in Brooklyn, New York, USA to Irish immigrants. His mother died when he was four, and he and his brother were sent to Ireland to be raised by a grandmother. Seven years later he returned to the United States. In 1934, after studies at Duquesne University and Saint Vincent Seminary, he was ordained into the priesthood in the Diocese of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he served for seven decades. His brother Patrick was also an ordained priest in Pittsburgh and a canon lawyer. During the Great Depression, Rice began his activism in social causes and especially in the American labor movement. Rice was mentored by Pittsburgh‘s original labor priest Father James Cox, and as a leader of the Catholic Radical Alliance, was involved in strikes against the H.J. Heinz Company. He met Dorothy Day and was a friend of Philip Murray, founder of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee and president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations. For many years, he was a columnist for the Pittsburgh Catholic. He continued his involvement in Catholic activism throughout the eras of Civil Rights, Vietnam War, the women’s movement, and the anti-war movements of recent years.

(From Wikipedia)