Born to a prominent Maryland family, Neale was educated at the Colleges of Bruges and Liège, where he was ordained a priest.

His tenure was considered unsuccessful, as the number of students declined dramatically due to his implementation of strict monastic discipline.

[6] This meant Neale was unable to enter the Jesuit order as he intended,[7] but he continued his seminary studies at the college in Liège.

[9] In 1789, John Carroll, the Bishop of Baltimore, founded the long-planned Georgetown College in the District of Columbia, the first Catholic institution of higher education in the United States.

He frequently expressed in correspondence with Carroll his belief that the Jesuits should direct their efforts to ministering to rural congregations in Southern Maryland, rather than on higher education.

[3] Eventually, Neale became the most outspoken opponent of Carroll's efforts to establish Georgetown College, which he believed to be at the expense of the Maryland Jesuits' rural manors.

[13] He succeeded in raising considerable funds from Catholics in Montgomery, Prince George's, Charles, and St. Mary's counties in Maryland during the first several months of his tenure.

[13] As the new church occupied the entire width of its lot, Neale sought to protect it and its adjacent cemetery from encroachment by purchasing land on either side as a buffer.

He would again contribute his own money fifteen years later to purchase the remainder of the block's width, where the Holy Trinity School now stands.

[18] As the first Catholic church in the District of Columbia,[15] the Georgetown Chapel drew parishioners from as far as Dumfries and Great Falls in Virginia and Bladensburg in Maryland.

The effect of this resolution was to deprive Carroll and the incumbent Sulpician president of the college, Louis William DuBourg, of any official control of the school.

At the board's first meeting in October 1797, Neale was elected vice president of the college, whose duties largely corresponded to those of his existing role of treasurer.

[34] In response to the request of Emperor Paul I of Russia, Pope Pius VII issued a bull in 1801 partially lifting the 1773 order of suppression by permitting the Jesuits to officially resume operation in the Russian Empire (which they had been already doing unofficially).

[38] Carroll was eventually persuaded,[38] and a Jesuit novitiate was formally opened on October 10, 1806, in a house offered for use by Neale, across the street from the now-Holy Trinity Church.

[7] The newly appointed superior of the Maryland Jesuits, Robert Molyneux, named Neale as the master of novices.

[31] During the War of 1812, Neale had most of the Jesuits' livestock in St. Inigoes removed to White Marsh, to keep them safe from looting by the British.

[41] Upon the death of his brother Leonard in 1817, Neale assumed his duties as spiritual director to the nuns of the Georgetown Visitation Monastery.