How a Cork priest survived Argentina’s military junta and found love amidst the darkness

Father Pat Rice’s harrowing kidnapping in Argentina, international rescue efforts, and a love story forged in adversity

Blanca Rice at her exhibition which will open on Saturday, March 22 at 2pm at the Blackwater Valley Makers Gallery in Fermoy and run until April 11. Picture: Eddie O'Hare

The story of an Irish priest kidnapped and tortured by military police in Argentina, along with a woman whom he would later marry, will feature in an exhibition on human rights violations being run in a Co Cork town by their daughter.

Fr Pat Rice, who was born in Fermoy, and Fatima Cabrera were walking home from a church in Buenos Aires on the night of October 11, 1976, when they were kidnapped by police rounding up people considered subversive by the military junta government which had recently seized power in a coup.