Msgr. Charles Owen Rice, known as Pittsburgh's "Labor Priest" for his decades of activism on behalf of working people, died yesterday at Vincentian Home in McCandless. He was 96.

	Tony Tye, Post-Gazette
	Msgr. Charles Owen Rice in 1996 photo.

Msgr. Rice marched on picket lines and led labor protests starting in the 1930s, joined arms with Martin Luther King in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and was an early opponent of the war in Vietnam.

His forceful and opinionated writings appeared for years in the Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper, and Bishop Donald Wuerl once joked about the volume of mail the columns generated.

A series of small strokes had left him frail in recent years, but he was able to attend a celebration of his 70th anniversary as a priest in July 2004 at St. Anne in Castle Shannon, his home church. He was given a standing ovation during the Mass, which was celebrated by Bishop Wuerl and more than 40 priests, some of whom worked with Msgr. Rice through the years.

"Msgr. Rice was a priest's priest," said the Rev. Robert Cedolia, current pastor at St. Anne. "He gave his entire life to the church. For 71 years, he was dedicated and committed to the church. He loved God and he loved people and everything he did flowed from that. Everything he did was for the good of the people."

	Post-Gazette archives
	John L. Lewis, president of the Committee for Industrial Organization, seen here talking with the Rev. Rice at the CIO's first constitutional convention held in Pittsburgh in November of 1938. Msgr. Rice delivered the invocation for that historic gathering.

"It's like the passing of an era," said the Rev. John Rushofsky, director of clergy personnel for the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese. "He was the oldest priest in the diocese. He really loved being a priest and enjoyed having priests around. He used to say that being a priest was the best job in the world."

Msgr. Rice was born in New York City in 1908, the son of Irish immigrants. After his mother died when he was 4, he and a brother were sent back to Ireland to be raised by his grandmother. By age 11, he returned to the States with an Irish brogue and a vocation.

He was ordained into the priesthood in 1934 following studies at Duquesne University and St. Vincent Seminary. Three years later, he helped found the St. Joseph House of Hospitality in the Hill District, a shelter that still operates under the umbrella of Catholic Charities.

He and two older clergy also organized the Catholic Radical Alliance, which later became an important adjunct of the Catholic Worker movement in America.

During World War II, Msgr. Rice was rent control director for the city of Pittsburgh. In the 1940s, he became a leader of anti-Communist forces inside the labor movement, a role about which he later expressed regret.

He marched arm in arm with Martin Luther King at the United Nations in 1967, addressed anti-war rallies in the 1960s and wrote in the Pittsburgh Catholic in 1972 that "Vietnam is a dirty and dangerous business and we have to get out."

As a young priest, he joined his first picket line at the H.J. Heinz Co. factory on the North Side during the Depression in 1937, a year that was a turning point in the movement to organize industrial workers.

His appearance at the Heinz plant along with two other priests caused an uproar. He was denounced from pulpits, particularly by clergy whose parishes had been helped by Heinz.

It also drew the attention of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee, which invited him to visit a picket line in Ohio during a strike called to organize Youngstown Sheet and Tube and other "little" steel companies.

	Post-Gazette archives
	In 1948, the Rev. Rice, center, joined the picket line of striking American Federation of Labor restaurant employees at the Downtown Rodgers Dairy Co. stores. Here he is shown at the Wood Street store.

He is remembered as one of the few clergy in American mill towns to take the side of the union.

"I got the other two priests in my little Chevy and we hit the picket line there," Msgr. Rice wrote in one of his columns. "We all spoke, but mine was a rip-roaring, no-holds-barred denunciation of the steel magnates and the infamy of great wealth."

Once back in Pittsburgh, Msgr. Rice, by his own account, became involved in every labor struggle and every strike -- and there were many of them over the years. Some called him a publicity hound, others a great friend.

A year after Heinz, Msgr. Rice delivered the invocation at the founding convention in Pittsburgh of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a forerunner of the AFL-CIO.

He protested steel plant shutdowns in the 1980s and joined striking workers of The Pittsburgh Press in 1992.

"He was the most important Catholic social activist in 20th-century Pittsburgh," Charles McCollester, a labor relations professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, said in 2004, at the reception honoring the 70th anniversary of Msgr. Rice's ordination. Dr. McCollester was editor of "Fighter With a Heart," a collection of Msgr. Rice's writings.

In 1998, at a celebration of his 90th birthday, Msgr. Rice said, "I've only been a parish priest and I haven't tried to be anything else, but as far as labor is concerned and the poor and the blacks, I kept the faith. I tried to help the downtrodden."

In his seven decades as a priest, Msgr. Rice was pastor of numerous churches, including St. Joseph in Natrona, Immaculate Conception in Washington, Pa., and Holy Rosary in Homewood.

In 1976, at the age of 68, he was named pastor of St. Anne, at his request. He remained a part of that parish as retired emeritus pastor up until his death, which was announced at the evening Mass at St. Anne yesterday.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete last night.