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Patrick Michael Rice (also Patricio Rice) (September 1945 – 8 July 2010) was an Irish human rights activist and former Catholic priest and consecrated life who became a resident of Argentina. He was a campaigner on behalf of the families of the "disappeared", the victims of that nation's dirty war during the 1970s. He himself was kidnapped and tortured as a part of that activity by the Argentine military dictatorship.
In the years following, Rice ran extensive human rights education programmes and helped form a union movement all the while working as a labourer priest. He also began his investigation of the "disappeared", which he was later highly regarded for. Through his social work in Villa miseria () he gained the trust and respect of their residents, the cooperatives, and the Catholic mission. It was through his work in a chapel in these villas that he met a young Capuchin friar, Carlos Armando Bustos, and also a group of lay members, amongst whom was the young catechist Fátima Cabrera.
Rice was kidnapped on 11 October 1976 in La Plata by security forces of the dictatorship as part of the National Reorganization Process. He was hooded and taken to the Navy School of Mechanics (known as ESMA, used as a torture centre during the dictatorship), where he was tortured brutally; the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights took on his case. After pressure from the Irish government and his religious order he was eventually freed, and was deported. Soon he was living in London, but returned permanently to Argentina in 1984. By that time, many of his friends, including Bustos, had been killed. In 1981 he co-founded and served as secretary for the Federación Latinoamericana de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos (Fedefam), which represented the families of the imprisoned and disappeared.
After leaving both the Little Brothers and the priesthood in 1985, Rice married Fátima Cabrera, who had been arrested and tortured at the same time as him; they had three children. He continued his work as a human rights advocate with the Little Brothers, becoming a member of their Secular Fraternity. He also served as secretary for the Movimiento Ecuménico por los Derechos Humanos, working for the Protestant clergy of the country.
In 2010, while returning to Argentina from a visit to his family in Ireland, Rice was changing planes in Miami, Florida, United States, when he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and died instantly. CONDOLENCIAS POR EL FALLECMIENTO DEL PADRE PATRICK RICE His body was returned to Argentina for burial.
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