Fr Berrigan grew up in Syracuse, New York, with his parents and five brothers. He is shown her speaking in 1981.
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U.S. Jesuit priest and poet Daniel J. Berrigan, well known for his activism against the Vietnam War that led to his imprisonment, died on the weekend in New York, The New York Times reported.
Then in the parking lot of the draft board office, the activists set the draft records on fire using homemade napalm to protest the Vietnam War.
They received prison sentences ranging from two to three and a half years.
Berrigan and his younger brother, the Rev. Philip Berrigan, emerged as leaders of the radical anti-war movement in the 1960s. He also wrote a play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.
As a seminarian, Berrigan wrote poetry. He later protested wars in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan and participated in the Occupy Wall Street Movement in New York, Reuters reported.
Born in Minnesota, Berrigan joined the Jesuit order in 1939 and was ordained a priest in 1952.
Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province, says Berrigan died Saturday at a Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University.
He adds, “It’s a pity that the New York Times doesn’t explain that Berrigan’s critique of Israel was equally harsh to his criticism of the United States at the time; and more important, that it was prophetic”.
Revd Daniel Berrigan was 94 years old.
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. Four months later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested Fr Berrigan at the Rhode Island home of theologian William Stringfellow.
Berrigan was often joined in his protest activities by his brother, Jerry, who passed away previous year at 95. He was released in 1972.
The Berrigan brothers continued to be active in the peace movement long after Catonsville.
“They returned having witnessed much horror and suffering and it was out of this experience came the Berrigan Brothers conviction of what Father Dan called “the sin of war” and their lifetime commitment to the abolition of war, nuclear weapons and all forms of violence”.
In 1980, the Berrigans and six others broke into a GeneralElectric nuclear missile site in Pennsylvania, and damagedwarhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files.
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Father Daniel’s brother Philip, died in 2002, aged 79.
