Rosemarie Burian, OSF, D. Min., (May 18, 1936 – September 22, 2019) was a Wheaton

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

Sister, teacher and founder of the Bethlehem Center/Northern Illinois Food Bank.

Career

She was the Pastoral Associate at St. Mark Catholic Church in

Wheaton, Illinois Wheaton is a suburban city in Milton and Winfield Townships and is the county seat of DuPage County, Illinois. It is located approximately west of Chicago. As of the 2010 census, the city had a total population of 52,894, which was estimated ...

. She went on to found Bethlehem Center, which is now called the

Northern Illinois Food Bank Northern Illinois Food Bank is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that focuses on providing food to those in need in northern Illinois. Partnerships and donors allow for more than 71,000 people to be fed each week through different programs. Nort ...

. Through her experience with the St. Mark's Food Pantry, she witnessed the devastating effects of both spiritual and material poverty. Too many children were going to bed and suffered from

malnourished Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is "a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients" which adversely affects the body's tissues a ...

, it is hard to imagine that hunger exists in the US but it does. So serious was the problem that the US Senate set up a

select committee Select committee may refer to: *Select committee (parliamentary system), a committee made up of a small number of parliamentary members appointed to deal with particular areas or issues *Select or special committee (United States Congress) *Select ...

to look into the issue. In response to this need, Sister Rosemarie assembled a group of people to work with her on this project. They became the first board of directors: Bonnie Goodman, Cathy Truesdale, Jim Truesdale, Clevis Cabrera, Joyce Shannon, Nick Hindman, Paul Wood, Barb Williams and Willie Williams. Sister Rosemarie also met with many local leaders, Leah Krantz, from The

Greater Chicago Food Depository The Greater Chicago Food Depository (GCFD) is a nonprofit organization that fights hunger throughout Cook County, Illinois. The GCFD distributes donated and purchased food through a network of 700 food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and community ...

and Bernie Kleina, the Executive Director of the Hope Fair Housing Center. It was also discovered that thousands of pounds of edible food was going into

landfill A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

s. The board contacted manufacturers and grocery stores to try to recover some of it. They realized a

food bank A food bank is a non-profit, charitable organization that distributes food to those who have difficulty purchasing enough to avoid hunger, usually through intermediaries like food pantries and soup kitchens. Some food banks distribute food direc ...

could be a way of recovering and distributing this much needed food. The name Bethlehem, meaning "House of Bread" was chosen. Sister Rosemarie was officially named the first Executive Director on September 28, 1982. What began as a way to help solve what was thought to be a temporary problem, has grown and as of June 2012, one in five children in Northern Illinois face hunger. Burian left to pursue other interests in December 1986. She went on to be a chaplain then a Spiritual Director and taught classes in Meditation and Mindfulness at the Tau Center in Wheaton, IL, a spirituality ministry of the Wheaton Franciscans.

Death and legacy

Burian died on September 22, 2019 at the age of 83.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Burian, Rosemarie 1936 births 2019 deaths Franciscan nuns American activists American nuns