Jesuit priest, peace activist Daniel Berrigan dies at 94

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Jesuit priest, peace activist Daniel Berrigan dies at 94
By MICHAEL BALSAMO

NEW YORK (AP) — The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest and peace activist who was imprisoned for burning draft files in a protest against the Vietnam War, died Saturday. He was 94.

Berrigan died at Murray-Weigel Hall, a Jesuit health care community in New York City after a "long illness," according to Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province.

"He died peacefully," Benigno said.

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, Maryland, 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 on Nov. 9, 1968 to prison terms ranging from two to 3.5 years.

When asked in 2009 by "America," a national Catholic magazine, whether he had any regrets, Berrigan replied: "I could have done sooner the things I did, like Catonsville."

Berrigan, a writer and poet, wrote about the courtroom experience in 1970 in a one-act play, "The Trial of the Catonsville Nine," which was later made into a movie.

Berrigan grew up in Syracuse, New York, with his parents and five brothers. He joined the Jesuit order after high school and taught preparatory school in New Jersey before being ordained a priest in 1952.

As a seminarian, Berrigan wrote poetry. His work captured the attention of an editor at Macmillan who referred the material to poet Marianne Moore. Her endorsement led to the publication of Berrigan's first book of poetry, "Time Without Number," which won the Lamont Poetry Prize in 1957.

Berrigan credited Dorothy Day, founder of The Catholic Worker newspaper, with introducing him to the pacifist movement and influencing his thinking about war.

Much later, while visiting Paris in 1963 on a teaching sabbatical from LeMoyne College, Berrigan met French Jesuits who spoke of the dire situation in Indochina. Soon after that, he and his brother founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, which helped organize protests against U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

Berrigan traveled to North Vietnam in 1968 and returned with three American prisoners of war who were being released as a goodwill gesture. He said that while there, he witnessed some of the destruction and suffering caused by the war.

Berrigan was teaching at Cornell University when his brother asked him to join a group of activists for the Catonsville demonstration. Philip Berrigan was at the time awaiting sentencing for a 1967 protest in Baltimore during which demonstrators poured blood on draft records.

"I was blown away by the courage and effrontery, really, of my brother," Berrigan recalled in a 2006 interview on the Democracy Now radio program.

After the Catonsville case had been unsuccessfully appealed, the Berrigan brothers and three of their co-defendants went underground. Philip Berrigan turned himself in to authorities in April 1969 at a Manhattan church. The FBI arrested Daniel Berrigan four months later at the Rhode Island home of theologian William Stringfellow.

Berrigan said in an interview that he became a fugitive to draw more attention to the anti-war movement.

The Berrigan brothers were sent to the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut. Daniel Berrigan was released in 1972 after serving about two years. His brother served about 2.5 years.

The Berrigan brothers continued to be active in the peace movement long after Catonsville. Together, they began the Plowshares Movement, an anti-nuclear weapons campaign in 1980. Both were arrested that year after entering a General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, and damaging nuclear warhead nose cones.

Philip Berrigan died of cancer on Dec. 6, 2002 at the age of 79.

Daniel Berrigan moved into a Jesuit residence in Manhattan in 1975.

In an interview with The Nation magazine on the 40th anniversary of the Catonsville demonstration, Berrigan lamented that the activism of the 1960s and early 1970s evaporated with the passage of time.

"The short fuse of the American left is typical of the highs and lows of American emotional life," he said. "It is very rare to sustain a movement in recognizable form without a spiritual base."

Berrigan's writings include "Prison Poems," published in 1973; "We Die Before We Live: Talking with the Very Ill," a 1980 book based on his experiences working in a cancer ward; and his autobiography, "To Dwell in Peace," published in 1987.


-- (c) Associated Press 2016-05-02

[alfalfa19]

A good man. I didn't realize he was that old. He deserved a peaceful death, and got it, it seems.

[boomerangutang]

I remember when that story broke. I was a high schooler in Wash.DC at the time. A brave man, and true liberal activities. I respect him.

The other side of the coin were people like Macnamera, Nixon, Haig, Kissinger. ......all dirty crooks who hobbled America. Macnamera (considered a Republican Whiz Kid was asked, year later, whether he made the right decisions about being so hawkish about the VN war. After a long pause, he grinned and said he would probably have done things differently. Ummmm, tell that to the parents/sisters/brothers of the 50,000+ American young men who died there, and the quarter million Vietnamese. Even to this day, I won't go visit VN because I'm ashamed for what my country did there fifty years ago.

Kissinger was even worse, if that's possible. The icing on the cake was K was given a Nobel Peace Prize! The co-recipient, the Viet Cong commander, wisely and humbly didn't accept the ill-gotten prize.

It's ironic, that Republicans currently are trying as hard as possible to savage HRC as the worse person since Attila the Hun. What did she do? Used a private web server for personal emails. ....and Benghazi, which may or may not have contributed to a few Americans getting killed. Yet how do the same Hillary haters see Nixon, Haig, Kissinger, Macnamera who actively and consciously enabled the killing of tens of thousands of Americans, and untold hundreds of thousands of Asians. They even contributed to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge problem.

[jesimps]

I remember when that story broke. I was a high schooler in Wash.DC at the time. A brave man, and true liberal activities. I respect him.

The other side of the coin were people like Macnamera, Nixon, Haig, Kissinger. ......all dirty crooks who hobbled America. Macnamera (considered a Republican Whiz Kid was asked, year later, whether he made the right decisions about being so hawkish about the VN war. After a long pause, he grinned and said he would probably have done things differently. Ummmm, tell that to the parents/sisters/brothers of the 50,000+ American young men who died there, and the quarter million Vietnamese. Even to this day, I won't go visit VN because I'm ashamed for what my country did there fifty years ago.

Kissinger was even worse, if that's possible. The icing on the cake was K was given a Nobel Peace Prize! The co-recipient, the Viet Cong commander, wisely and humbly didn't accept the ill-gotten prize.

It's ironic, that Republicans currently are trying as hard as possible to savage HRC as the worse person since Attila the Hun. What did she do? Used a private web server for personal emails. ....and Benghazi, which may or may not have contributed to a few Americans getting killed. Yet how do the same Hillary haters see Nixon, Haig, Kissinger, Macnamera who actively and consciously enabled the killing of tens of thousands of Americans, and untold hundreds of thousands of Asians. They even contributed to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge problem.

I won't shed any tears for this guy.

[Thaidream]

I do shed tears for him. If anyone would have listened to him- and stopped a war which killed 50K plus Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese the World would have been a better place and this portion of American history might be different. I am from the Vietnam era. Father Berrigan was a better man than me- I went, even though I knew in my heart it would end in disaster- he stood his ground and went to jail for it. A man of principle.

As the poster Boomer stated- I remember the scene where McNamara was asked years later about the war. His smirk and answer told me he knew the war was wrong and he did nothing to stop it. In my mind- all of them are war criminals-. History even shows that the incident in the 60's in the Gulf of Ton-kin where American ships were fired on by the North Vietnamese was contrived as a way to push America further into the war. History also shows President Kennedy was ready to with draw American Forces from Vietnam. During my time in America, I could not bring myself to walk up to the Vietnam Memorial- it was just too emotional. I saw the Memorial from afar. I do not blame any of the troops. The majority served with honor. fooled by an uncaring American administration that was beholden to the Military-Industrial complex.

Father Berrigan- Rest In Peace.

[arjunadawn]

RIP