Nancy Burns-Fusaro reports for The Sun in Westerly, Rhode Island:
The Rev. Jean Barry, a fierce advocate for the region’s homeless and hungry who helped change the way people think about poverty and was instrumental in transforming a small soup kitchen on Spruce Street into a comprehensive social services agency that tends to the needs of thousands each year, died [Feb. 18] at her home in Charlestown. She was 75.
Barry, the longtime executive director of the WARM Center of Westerly, was also an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church who served at a number of Rhode Island churches during her ministry. She also served as chaplain at Kent County Memorial Hospital in Warwick and as a clergy volunteer for female prisoners at the state’s Adult Correctional Institute.
A married mother of two, Barry once said she was drawn to social service through her religious training.
The Rev. Sunil Chandy, the Episcopal rector at Christ Church Westerly, said [Feb. 19] that the “ministry of the diaconate is to serve in God’s name.”
“She did this well,” said Chandy. “She was loved by many in our Diocese of Rhode Island.”
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
