Patrick Joseph "Paddy" Ryan (1904 – 1969), an Australian Catholic priest and anti-communist organiser, was born in Albury, New South Wales in 1904. He was ordained as a priest in the order of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in 1929. After gaining a doctorate in Rome, he returned to Australia and for many years taught philosophy at the order's seminary in Kensington, New South Wales. His philosophy was strictly neo-scholastic and he vigorously debated the atheist philosophers of Sydney University.