Benedictine University is a private Roman Catholic university located in Lisle, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. The school was founded in 1887 as St. Procopius College by the Benedictine monks of St. Procopius Abbey in the Pilsen community on the West Side of Chicago. The institution has retained a close relationship with the Benedictine Order, which bears the name of St. Benedict (480-543 A.D.), the acknowledged father of western monasticism.