BROTHERS OF THE PRESENTATION. — In 1802, at Waterford, Edmund Ignatius Rice founded the Institute of the Brothers Ireland (v.) for the instruction and religious formation of youth, which assumed its organizational form and juridical character when Pius VII approved it in 1820.
Its spread in Ireland was rapid, but when the time came to unite the houses under a superior general, those existing in the diocese of Cork, at the insistence of Bishop Mgr. Murphy, preferred to remain independent, thus coming to form a new autonomous institute under the name of B. of the P., subsequently approved by Leo XIII in 1889. The constitutions received pontifical approval in 1899. It currently numbers 1,915 religious with 45 houses: in Ireland, England, Canada, and India.