Blessed Edmund Ignatius
Rice ( ;
1 June,
1762 –
29 August,
1844), was a
Roman
Catholic missionary and educationalist. Edmund was the founder
of two
orders 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. He forged a successful career
in business and, after a tragic accident which killed his wife and
left his daughter disabled, devoted his life to the education and
service of the poor.
Christian Brother and Presentation Brother schools around the world
continue to follow the system of education and traditions
established by Edmund Rice (see
List of Christian Brothers
schools).
Early life and career
Edmund Rice's childhood home at
Callan
Edmund
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
stepsisters, Joan and Jane Murphy, the offspring of his mother's
first marriage.
At this time,Irish Catholics were punished by anti-Catholic Penal
Laws which were enacted and enforced by the
Protestant-dominated
Irish parliament. 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, and was not reformed until 1782. In this
environment,
hedge schools
proliferated. The boys of the Rice family obtained an education at
home through Patrick Grace, a member of the small community of
Augustinian friars in Callan.
That said, the Rices were quite well off by the standards of the
day.
As a
young man, Rice spent two years at a school in Kilkenny
to complete
his education. His uncle Michael owned a merchant business
in the nearby port town of Waterford
. In 1779 Edmund was apprenticed to him,
moving into a house in the market parish of
Ballybricken, entering the business of trading
livestock and other supplies, and the supervising of loading of
victuals onto ships bound for the British colonies. Michael Rice
died in 1785, and this business was passed into Edmund's
ownership.
In about 1785 he married a young woman (perhaps Mary Elliott, the
daughter of a Waterford
tanner). Little is
known about their married life, and Mary died in January 1789
following an accident, possibly by a fever that set in afterwards.
The circumstances surrounding this accident are unclear, but she
may have fallen off a horse that she was riding, or thrown out of a
carriage by panicking horses. Pregnant at the time, a daughter was
delivered on Mary's deathbed. The daughter (also named Mary) was
born handicapped. Edmund Rice was left a widower, with an infant
daughter in delicate health.
Vocation and beginnings
Rice devoted himself to prayer and charitable work, particularly
with the poor and marginalised of Waterford. In 1802, when he
established a makeshift school in a converted stable in New Street,
Waterford, he found the children were so difficult to manage that
the teachers resigned. This prompted him to sell his thriving
business to another prominent Roman Catholic merchant, a Mr. Quan,
and devote himself to training teachers who would dedicate their
lives to prayers and to teaching the children free of charge.
Despite the difficulties involved, Edmund's classes were so popular
that another temporary school had to be set up on another of his
properties, this time in nearby Stephen Street.
The turning point of Rice's ministry was the arrival of two young
men, Thomas Grosvenor and Patrick Finn, from his hometown of
Callan. They came to him with the desire of joining a
religious congregation, but had not
decided which they would join. As it turned out, they remained to
teach at Edmund Rice's school, and formed their own religious
community. The subsequent success of the New Street school led to a
more permanent building, christened '
Mount Sion', where construction
began on June 1, 1802. The Mount Sion monastery was officially
blessed by Bishop
Thomas Hussey on June 7, 1803. Since
the schoolhouse was not yet completed, Rice, Finn, and Grosvenor
took up residence but walked each day from Mt Sion to their schools
on New Street and Stephen Street. On May 1, 1804, the adjoining
school was opened and blessed by Hussey's successor, Bishop
John Power, and their pupils transferred
to the new building.
All of Edmund's educational activities were illegal in the eyes of
the authorities in Ireland, in that no Roman Catholic was allowed
"to fund, endow or establish any school, academy or college".
Nevertheless, it appears that his request to the local
Church of Ireland bishop for a school
licence was eventually granted, thanks to the appeals of some of
Rice's more influential friends.
Foundation of the Christian Brothers and Presentation
Brothers
In 1808, seven of the staff including Edmund Rice, took religious
vows under Bishop Power of Waterford. Following the example of
Nano Nagle's Presentation Sisters, they
were called
Presentation
Brothers. This was the first congregation of men to be founded
in Ireland and one of the few ever founded by a layman. Gradually a
transformation had taken place amongst the "quay kids" of
Waterford, largely attributed to the work of Edmund and his
Brothers, who educated, clothed and fed the boys. Other bishops in
Ireland supplied Edmund Rice with men whom he prepared for
religious life and a life of teaching. In this way the Presentation
Brothers spread throughout Ireland.
However, the communities were under the control of various diocesan
bishops rather than Rice, and this created problems when Brothers
were needed to be transferred from one school to another. Rice
sought, and ultimately obtained, approval from
Pope Pius VII for the community to be made
into a pontifical congregation with Rice as Superior General; he
was then able to move brothers to wherever they were most needed.
In the 1820s further difficulties emerged owing to the expansion of
the society and it becoming two distinct congregations. From this
time on they were called
Christian Brothers and
the Presentation Brothers. The motto of the Christian Brothers was:
"The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the
name of the Lord forever". Job1:21.
In 1828,
the North Richmond Street house and schools in Dublin
were
established by Rice, with the foundation stone laid by the
politician Daniel O'Connell.
The building housed the brothers' headquarters for many years and
the present residence incorporates the original house built by
Rice, who lived here for several years beginning in 1831.
Retirement and death
In February 1838, Rice left the North Richmond Street community and
returned to Mount Sion in Waterford. Aged seventy-six, and by now
in poor health, he wrote to the different communities calling for a
General Chapter to elect a new
superior-general. The Chapter, which opened on July 24, 1838,
resulted in the election of Br.
Michael Paul Riordan as Rice's
successor.
From this time on, Edmund Rice spent an increasing proportion of
his time at Mount Sion and the adjoining school, showing a
continued interest in the pupils and their teachers. He would also
take a short walk each day on the slope of Mount Sion, but his
increasingly painful
arthritis led the
community superior, Br. Joseph Murphy, to purchase a wheelchair for
his benefit. Rice's health took a turn for the worse at Christmas
time, 1841, and even though expectations of his imminent death did
not come to pass, he was increasingly confined to his room.
After
living in a near-comatose state for more than two years (in the
constant care of a nurse since May 1842), Rice died at 11am on
August 29 1844 at
Mount Sion, Waterford, where his remains lie in a casket to this
day. Large crowds filled the streets around his house in
Dublin to honour him.
Beatification and legacy
Memorial erected in Callan on Green
Street (also known as Edmund Ignatius Rice Street), unveiled and
blessed in July 1951.
The first attempt to introduce Rice's cause to
sainthood was in 1911 by Brother Mark Hill who
travelled Waterford and other parts of Ireland collecting
statements from people as to why they thought Rice should be made a
saint, but very little progress was made. The cause was taken up by
Pius Noonan, who was the superior general at the time. With the
help of
Monsignor Giovanni Batista Montini
(the future
Pope Paul VI), the cause
was officially opened in Dublin in 1957.
In 1976 the Historical Commission of the
Dublin Archdiocese
recommended that Rice's cause be brought to Rome, and the Vatican
agreed to look into the cause. Three brothers had the burden of
investigating archives and collecting evidence on why Rice should
be declared a saint: Mark Hill, David Fitzpatrick and Columba
Normoyle. After the commission's unanimous approval,
Pope John Paul II declared Rice worthy of
his cause in 1993.
On April 2, 1993, the
Pope John Paul
II declared Edmund Rice to be
venerable and two years later approved a miracle
attributed to his
intercession.
The
miracle occurred in 1976, when Kevin Ellison of Newry
, had been
given only 48 hours to live due to complications from a gangrenous colon,
and an apparent lack of viable colon tissue (a conclusion reached
by five doctors after hours in surgery). A family friend,
Christian Brother Laserian O'Donnell, gave Ellison's parents a
relic of Edmund Rice. Many friends prayed for
a miracle through the intercession of Rice and a special
Mass was offered for Ellison's recovery. Only the relic
of Edmund Rice was placed at the bedside of the dying man who
survived the 48 hour period during which he was supposed to die,
and more besides. Upon investigation, surgeons discovered a
considerable length of previously undetected colon. Ellison fully
recovered after a few weeks.
These events paved the way for Rice's beatification on
October 6,
1996 and he become
known as Blessed Edmund Ignatius Rice. His official feast day is
May 5.
References
Bibliography
- Dáire Keogh, Edmund Rice, 1762-1844 (Four Courts
Press: Blackrock, Ireland, 1996)
- Dáire Keogh, Edmund Rice and the first Christian Brothers (Four
Courts Press, 2008)
- M.C. Normoyle, A Tree is Planted: The Life and Times of
Edmund Rice (Congregation of Christian Brothers: n.l.,
1976)
- A.L. O'Toole, A Spiritual Profile of Edmund Ignatius
Rice (The Burleigh Press: Bristol, 1984)
External links
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