Société du Verbe-Divin
Rice was born in Fermoy, County 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, at which point he was posted to Argentina. Soon afterwards he left the Divine Word Missionaries, and, in 1972, entered the Little Brothers of the Gospel of Charles de Foucauld, a religious congregation of men and women dedicated to sharing the lives of the poorest of the earth. His first post of assignment was in the Santa Fe Province. He later continued his work in Buenos Aires, initially in the town of La Boca, later in Villa Soldati.