Activist, priest dies at 94
NEW YORK — His defiant protests helped shape Americans’ opposition to the Vietnam War. And they landed the Rev. Daniel Berrigan behind bars.
The Roman Catholic priest, writer and poet, who became a household name in the U.S. in the 1960s after being imprisoned for burning draft files in a protest against the war, died Saturday. He was 94.
Berrigan died after a “long illness” at Murray-Weigel Hall, a Jesuit health care community in New York City according to Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province.
Berrigan and his younger brother, the Rev. Philip Berrigan, emerged as leaders of the radical anti-war movement in the 1960s.
The Berrigan brothers entered a draft board in Catonsville, Md., on May 17, 1968, with seven other activists and removed records of young men about to be shipped off to Vietnam. The group took the files outside and burned them in garbage cans.
The Catonsville Nine, as they came to be known, were convicted on federal charges accusing them of destroying U.S. property and interfering with the Selective Service Act of 1967. All were sentenced to prison terms.
