Francis Patrick Mary Browne, SJ, MC & Bar (3 January 1880 – 7 July 1960) was a distinguished Irish Jesuit and a prolific photographer.

[3] Upon his return to Ireland, he joined the Jesuits and spent two years in the novitiate at St Stanislaus College, Tullabeg, County Offaly.

He attended the Royal University, Dublin, where he was a classmate of James Joyce, who featured him as Mr Browne the Jesuit in Finnegans Wake.

[3] In April 1912 he received a present from his uncle: a ticket for the maiden voyage of RMS Titanic from Southampton, England, to Queenstown, Ireland, via Cherbourg, France.

Browne took dozens of photographs of life aboard Titanic on that day and the next morning; he shot pictures of the gymnasium, the Marconi room, the first-class dining saloon, his own cabin, and of passengers enjoying walks on the Promenade and Boat decks.

[6] During his voyage on the Titanic, Browne was befriended by an American millionaire couple who were seated at his table in the liner's first-class dining saloon.

He served with the Guards until the spring of 1920, including service at the Battle of the Somme and at Locre, Wytschaete, Messines Ridge, Passchendaele, Ypres, Amiens and Arras in Flanders.

[15] Browne took many photographs during his time in Europe; one, which he called "Watch on the Rhine", is considered a classic image of World War I.

His photographs from Australia covered a cross-section of life in the continent; he took pictures of farms, cattle stations, industries, new immigrants, and members of Irish religious orders who lived in that country.

[16] On his way back to Ireland, he visited Ceylon, Aden, Suez, Saloniki, Naples, Toulon, Gibraltar, Algeciras, and Lisbon, taking photographs of local life and events at every stop.

His negatives lay forgotten for 25 years after his death; they were found by chance in 1985 when Father Edward E. O'Donnell, SJ, discovered them in a large metal trunk, once belonging to Browne, in the Irish Jesuit archives.

"When the trunk was opened in 1985, people compared him to the greats like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Doisneau, but his work predated theirs by decades", archivist David Davison later recalled.

An hour-long documentary film on Browne's next book, detailing his experiences as an army chaplain during the Great War, appeared on RTÉ (Ireland's national broadcaster).

An exhibition of these pictures was opened by the Tánaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) of Ireland, Joan Burton, at the Farmleigh Gallery in Dublin, running to Christmas 2014.