Charles Owen Rice

Rev. Charles Owen Rice (r) with Dr. Benjamin Spock (l) and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (c).

Monsignor Charles Owen Rice (1908—2005) was a Roman Catholic priest and an American labor activist.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York 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.

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. 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. 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.

[edit] References

Nate Guidry and Jon Schmitz (2005). "Labor Priest" Msgr. Rice Dies at 96. Retrieved November 14, 2005.
Heineman, Kenneth J. (1999). A Catholic New Deal: Religion and Reform in Depression Pittsburgh. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 0-271-01895-X.
Rice, Charles Owen (1996). Fighter With a Heart: Writings of Charles Owen Rice, Pittsburgh Labor Priest. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 0-8229-5619-5.