The son of Robert Spence and his wife Ellen, née Sullivan, he received his education from the Christian Brothers and Vincentian Fathers before entering the Dominican novitiate in Tallaght, outside Dublin.

He was ordained a priest on 23 December 1882, and two days later, at Bom Sucesso convent he celebrated the first Dominican high mass in Portugal since religious orders were suppressed there in 1833.

After returning from an ad limina visit to Rome in 1921, he travelled through the archdiocese to raise funds for the completion and transformation of St Francis Xavier's Cathedral, with the new building opened in 1926.

[6] In July 1933, in the same month as he was made a count of the Holy Roman Empire, an assistant at the pontifical throne and a companion to Pius XI, Andrew Killian was appointed to serve as Spence's coadjutor.

[1] On 8 March 1931, Spence dedicated the pulpit designed by Adelaide architect Herbert Jory for St Xavier's, erected as a memorial to Roman Catholic soldiers who had died in World War I and regarded as an important example of church furniture.