He was created a domestic prelate (a Monsignor) by the Pope in 1950. Mgr. de Brún died in Dublin on 5 June 1960. His brother was His Eminence Michael Cardinal Browne, O.P.. His sister, Margaret Browne, married the Irish revolutionary and statesman Seán MacEntee with whom she had a daughter, Máire (the noted Irish language poet scholar, Máire Mhac an tSaoi). He bought land in Dún Chaoin in the County Kerry "Gaeltacht", and in the 1920s he built a house there, where his sisters children would stay. "The Big Sycamore" (1958) is a fictionalised account of the early life of the Browne family, written (under the pen-name Joseph Brady) by his brother, The Rt Rev. Maurice Monsignor Browne.