| Patrick Rice | |
|---|---|
Interview in Mexico DF (1982). |
|
| Nationality | Irish |
| Occupation | Priest Human Rights activist |
| Spouse | Fátima Cabrera |
| Children | three |
Patrick Michael Rice (September 1945, Fermoy – 8 July 2010, Miami) was an Irish human rights activist and former priest. He was a campaigner on behalf of the families of the victims of Argentina's dirty war, the "disappeared". He himself was kidnapped and tortured whilst working as a missionary priest in Argentina.[1]
He was born in Ireland in Fermoy, Co Cork, to a farming family. He joined the "Divine Word Missionaries", studied philosophy and theology at St Patrick's College, Maynooth, and was ordained in 1970. In the same year he was posted to Argentina. Soon afterwards he left the Divine Word Missionaries, and in 1972 he entered into the Fraternidad Hermanos del Evangelio Carlos de Foucauld. His first post of assignment was in the Santa Fe Province. He later continued his work in Buenos Aires, initially in the La Boca town and later in the Villa Porteña Nº3 in Villa Soldati.
In the years following, he ran extensive human rights education programmes and helped form a union movement all the while working as a labourer priest. He also began on what he would later be highly-regarded for, his investigation of the "disappeared". Through his social work in these Villas miseria he successfully gained the trust and respect of the residents of these areas, the cooperatives, and the Catholic mission. It was through his work in a chapel in these villas that he met the priest Carlos Bustos, and also a group of lay members, amongst which was the young catechist Fátima Cabrera, who later married Rice. They both were kidnapped by the terrorist dictatorship on 11 October 1976 in La Plata by security forces. Rice was hooded and tortured brutally and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took charge of his case. After pressures of the Irish government, Rice was finally freed. Soon, he exiled in London and came back to the country in 1984. Many of his friends at the time (like Bustos) were killed or disappeared. After renouncing as priest he formed a family with Fátima Cabrera and they had three children.[2] Since then, Rice was a renowned human rights advocate.[3]