Daniel Berrigan

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American Catholic priest and activist (1921–2016)

title: "Daniel Berrigan" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["1921-births", "2016-deaths", "20th-century-american-roman-catholic-priests", "21st-century-american-roman-catholic-priests", "20th-century-american-academics", "20th-century-american-jesuits", "20th-century-american-male-writers", "20th-century-american-non-fiction-writers", "20th-century-american-poets", "20th-century-prisoners-and-detainees-of-the-united-states-federal-government", "21st-century-american-academics", "21st-century-american-jesuits", "21st-century-american-male-writers", "21st-century-american-non-fiction-writers", "21st-century-american-poets", "academics-from-syracuse,-new-york", "activists-from-syracuse,-new-york", "american-anti-abortion-activists", "american-anarchists", "american-anti–death-penalty-activists", "american-anti–nuclear-weapons-activists", "american-anti–vietnam-war-activists", "american-anti-war-activists", "american-catholic-poets", "american-catholic-priests-convicted-of-crimes", "american-christian-pacifists", "american-consistent-life-ethics-activists", "american-founders", "american-hiv/aids-activists", "american-male-non-fiction-writers", "american-male-poets", "american-nonviolence-advocates", "american-people-of-german-descent", "american-people-of-irish-descent", "american-roman-catholic-writers", "american-tax-resisters", "berrigan-family", "catholic-anarchists", "catholic-pacifists", "catholic-workers", "catholics-from-minnesota", "depaul-university-special-collections-and-archives-holdings", "fbi-ten-most-wanted-fugitives", "fordham-university-faculty", "le-moyne-college-faculty", "people-from-the-upper-west-side", "people-from-virginia,-minnesota", "religious-leaders-from-syracuse,-new-york", "roman-catholic-activists"] description: "American Catholic priest and activist (1921–2016)" topic_path: "philosophy" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Berrigan" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary American Catholic priest and activist (1921–2016) ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox person"]

FieldValue
honorific_prefixThe Reverend
nameDaniel Berrigan
honorific_suffixSJ
imageNLN Dan Berrigan 2008a.jpg
altFather Daniel Berrigan speaking at a Witness Against Torture event held on December 18, 2008, in the Lower East Side (New York City).
captionBerrigan in 2008
birth_nameDaniel Joseph Berrigan
birth_date
birth_placeVirginia, Minnesota, U.S.
death_date
death_placeNew York City, U.S.
occupation
known_for
relativesPhilip Berrigan (brother)
website
::

| honorific_prefix = The Reverend | name = Daniel Berrigan | honorific_suffix = SJ | image = NLN Dan Berrigan 2008a.jpg | alt = Father Daniel Berrigan speaking at a Witness Against Torture event held on December 18, 2008, in the Lower East Side (New York City). | caption = Berrigan in 2008 | birth_name = Daniel Joseph Berrigan | birth_date = | birth_place = Virginia, Minnesota, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = New York City, U.S. | other_names = | occupation = | years_active = | known_for = | relatives = Philip Berrigan (brother) | website = Daniel Joseph Berrigan (May 9, 1921 – April 30, 2016) was an American Jesuit priest, anti-war activist, Christian pacifist, playwright, poet, and author.

Berrigan's protests against the Vietnam War earned him both scorn and admiration, especially regarding his association with the Catonsville Nine. He was arrested multiple times and sentenced to prison for destruction of government property, and was listed on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's "most wanted list" after flight to avoid imprisonment (the first-ever priest on the list).

For the rest of his life, Berrigan remained one of the United States' leading anti-war activists. In 1980, he co-founded the Plowshares movement, an anti-nuclear protest group, that put him back into the national spotlight. Berrigan was an author of some 50 books, a teacher, and a university educator.

Early life

Daniel Joseph Berrigan was born in Virginia, Minnesota, the son of Thomas Berrigan, a second-generation Irish Catholic and active trade union member, and Frieda Berrigan (née Fromhart), who was of German ancestry. He was the fifth of six sons. His youngest brother was fellow peace activist Philip Berrigan.

At age 5, Berrigan's family moved to Syracuse, New York. Berrigan was devoted to the Catholic Church throughout his youth. He joined the Jesuits directly out of high school in 1939 and was ordained to the priesthood on June 19, 1952. In 1946, Berrigan earned a bachelor's degree from St. Andrew-on-Hudson, a Jesuit seminary in Hyde Park, New York. In 1952 he received a master's degree from Woodstock College in Baltimore, Maryland.

Career

Berrigan taught at St. Peter's Preparatory School in Jersey City from 1946 to 1949.

In 1954, Berrigan was assigned to teach French and theology at the Jesuit Brooklyn Preparatory School. In 1957 he was appointed professor of New Testament studies at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York. The same year, he won the Lamont Prize for his book of poems, Time Without Number. He developed a reputation as a religious radical, working actively against poverty and on changing the relationship between priests and lay people. While at Le Moyne, he founded its International House.

While on a sabbatical from Le Moyne in 1963, Berrigan traveled to Paris and met French Jesuits who criticized the social and political conditions in Indochina. Taking inspiration from this, he and his brother Philip founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship, a group that organized protests against the war in Vietnam.

On October 28, 1965, Berrigan, along with the Reverend Richard John Neuhaus and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, founded an organization known as Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV). The organization, founded at the Church Center for the United Nations, was joined by the likes of Doctor Hans Morgenthau, the Reverend Reinhold Niebuhr, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, and the Reverend Philip Berrigan his brother, among many others. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who delivered his 1967 speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence under sponsorship from CALCAV, served as the national co-chairman of the organization.

From 1966 to 1970, Berrigan was the assistant director of the Cornell University United Religious Work (CURW), the umbrella organization for all religious groups on campus, including the Cornell Newman Club (later the Cornell Catholic Community), eventually becoming the group's pastor. Berrigan was the first faculty advisor of Cornell University's first gay rights student group, the Student Homophile League, in 1968.

Berrigan at one time or another held faculty positions or ran programs at Union Theological Seminary, Loyola University New Orleans, Columbia, Cornell, and Yale. His longest tenure was at Fordham (a Jesuit university located in the Bronx), where for a brief time he also served as poet-in-residence.

Berrigan appeared briefly in the 1986 Warner Bros. film The Mission, playing a Jesuit priest. He also served as a consultant on the film.

Activism

Vietnam War era

Berrigan, his brother and Josephite priest Philip Berrigan, and Trappist monk Thomas Merton founded an interfaith coalition against the Vietnam War and wrote letters to major newspapers arguing for an end to the war. In 1967, Berrigan witnessed the public outcry that followed from the arrest of his brother Philip, for pouring blood on draft records as part of the Baltimore Four.Religion and War Resistance in the Plowshares Movement (2008) Sharon Erickson Nepstad, Cambridge University Press, p48 Philip was sentenced to six years in prison for defacing government property. The fallout he had to endure from these many interventions, including his support for prisoners of war and, in 1968, seeing firsthand the conditions on the ground in Vietnam, further radicalized Berrigan, or at least strengthened his determination to resist American military imperialism.

Berrigan traveled to Hanoi with Howard Zinn during the Tet Offensive in January 1968 to "receive" three American airmen, the first American prisoners of war released by the North Vietnamese since the US bombing of that nation had begun.

In 1968, he signed the Writers and Editors War Tax Protest pledge, vowing to refuse to make tax payments in protest of the Vietnam War. In the same year, he was interviewed in the anti-Vietnam War documentary film In the Year of the Pig, and later that year became involved in radical non-violent protest.

Catonsville Nine

::quote

::

|quote = The short fuse of the American left is typical of the highs and lows of American emotional life. It is very rare to sustain a movement in recognizable form without a spiritual base. |source = Daniel Berrigan, on the 40th anniversary of the Catonsville Nine (2008) |width = 22em |style = background:light blue;

Main article: Catonsville Nine

Daniel Berrigan and his brother Philip, along with seven other Catholic protesters, used homemade napalm to destroy 378 draft files in the parking lot of the Catonsville, Maryland, draft board on May 17, 1968. This group, which came to be known as the Catonsville Nine, issued a statement after the incident:

Berrigan was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison, but went into hiding with the help of fellow radicals prior to imprisonment. While on the run, Berrigan was interviewed for Lee Lockwood's documentary The Holy Outlaw. The Federal Bureau of Investigation apprehended him on August 11, 1970, at the home of William Stringfellow and Anthony Towne on Block Island. Berrigan was then imprisoned at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, until his release on February 24, 1972.

In retrospect, the trial of the Catonsville Nine was significant, because it "altered resistance to the Vietnam War, moving activists from street protests to repeated acts of civil disobedience, including the burning of draft cards". As The New York Times noted in its obituary, Berrigan's actions helped "shape the tactics of opposition to the Vietnam War."

Plowshares movement

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b6/NLN_Dan_Berrigan.jpg" caption="Daniel Berrigan is arrested for [[civil disobedience]] outside the US Mission to the UN in 2006"] ::

Main article: Plowshares movement

On September 9, 1980, Berrigan, his brother Philip, and six others including Anne Montgomery RSCJ, Elmer Maas, Carl Kabat, John Schuchardt, Dean Hammer, and Molly Rush (the "Plowshares Eight") began the Plowshares movement. They trespassed onto the General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts. The story is partly told in the book ARISE AND WITNESS: Poems by Anne Montgomery, RSCJ, About Faith, Prison, War Zones and Nonviolent Resistance, published in 2024. On April 10, 1990, after ten years of appeals, Berrigan's group was re-sentenced and paroled for up to 231/2 months in consideration of time already served in prison. Their legal battle was re-created in Emile de Antonio's 1982 film In the King of Prussia, which starred Martin Sheen and featured appearances by the Plowshares Eight as themselves.

Consistent life ethic

Berrigan endorsed a consistent life ethic, a morality based on a holistic reverence for life. As a member of the Rochester, New York-area consistent life ethic advocacy group Faith and Resistance Community, he protested via civil disobedience against abortion at a new Planned Parenthood clinic in 1991.

AIDS activism

Berrigan said of pastoral care to AIDS patients: Berrigan published Sorrow Built a Bridge: Friendship and AIDS reflecting on his experiences ministering to AIDS patients through the Supportive Care Program at St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center in 1989. The Religious Studies Review wrote, "the strength of this volume lies in its capacity to portray sensitively the impact of AIDS on human lives." Speaking about AIDS patients, many of whom were gay, The Charlotte Observer quoted Berrigan saying in 1991, "Both the church and the state are finding ways to kill people with AIDS, and one of the ways is ostracism that pushes people between the cracks of respectability or acceptability and leaves them there to make of life what they will or what they cannot."

Other activism

::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/87/NLN_Frida_and_Dan_Berrigan.jpg" caption="Berrigan and his niece, [[Frida Berrigan]], at the Witness Against Torture event held in NYC's Lower East Side on December 18, 2008"] ::

Although much of his later work was devoted to assisting AIDS patients in New York City, Berrigan still held to his activist roots throughout his life. He maintained his opposition to American interventions abroad, from Central America in the 1980s, through the Gulf War in 1991, the Kosovo War, the US invasion of Afghanistan, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was also an opponent of capital punishment, a contributing editor of Sojourners, and a supporter of the Occupy movement.

P. G. Coy, P. Berryman, D. L. Anderson, and others consider Berrigan to be a Christian anarchist.

In media

Death

Berrigan died in the Bronx, New York City, on April 30, 2016, at Murray-Weigel Infirmary, the Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University. Since 1975, he had lived on the Upper West Side at the West Side Jesuit Community. ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/Dan_Berrigan_1.jpg" caption="Daniel Berrigan, October 28, 2006, at the 3rd Annual Staten Island Freedom & Peace Festival"] ::

Awards and recognition

Notes

References

References

  1. "Fire and Faith: The Catonsville Nine File". Enoch Pratt Free Library.
  2. Chris Hedges. (May 20, 2008). "Daniel Berrigan: Forty Years After Catonsville".
  3. (April 30, 2016). "Daniel J. Berrigan, Defiant Priest Who Preached Pacifism, Dies at 94". [[The New York Times]].
  4. (May 21, 2016). "Blessed are the peacemakers". The Economist.
  5. (June 8, 2006). "Holy Outlaw: Lifelong Peace Activist Father Daniel Berrigan Turns 85". [[Democracy Now!]].
  6. (May 2016). "US anti-Vietnam war priest Daniel Berrigan dies aged 94". BBC News.
  7. "Daniel Berrigan – United States Census, 1930".
  8. (December 8, 2002). "Philip Berrigan, Former Priest and Peace Advocate in the Vietnam War Era, Dies at 79". The New York Times.
  9. (2014). "Guide to the Daniel Berrigan Papers".
  10. (April 30, 2016). "Daniel Berrigan, poet, peacemaker, dies at 94". [[National Catholic Reporter]].
  11. "Danial J Berrigan – United States Census, 1940".
  12. (April 30, 2016). "Peace activist Father Berrigan dies, taught at St. Peter's Prep in '40s". [[The Jersey Journal]].
  13. (1970). "New York Times Encyclopedic Almanac". New York Times, Book & Educational Division.
  14. Siracusa, J.M.. (2012). "Encyclopedia of the Kennedys: The People and Events That Shaped America: The People and Events That Shaped America". ABC-CLIO.
  15. Curtis, R.. (1974). "The Berrigan Brothers: The Story of Daniel and Philip Berrigan". Hawthorn Books.
  16. (2012). "Faith, Resistance, and the Future: Daniel Berrigan's Challenge to Catholic Social Thought". Fordham University Press.
  17. "Alumni & College News".
  18. (May 2016). "Daniel Berrigan, priest and anti-Vietnam war peace activist, dies". The Guardian.
  19. (April 4, 2006). "From Vietnam to Redbud Woods: Daniel Berrigan launches events commemorating five decades of activism at Cornell". [[Cornell Chronicle]].
  20. (June 6, 2020). "CUGALA Reunion 2020 The First American University". [[Cornell University]].
  21. (March 2003). "Dissenter Poet in Residence: The Rev. Daniel Berrigan, S.J.".
  22. Guerierro, Katherine. (November 6, 1997). "Peace activist Daniel Berrigan to teach poetry course".
  23. (March 25, 1993). "Father Berrigan Talks About His Film Mission The Jesuit And Noted Peace Activist Discussed His Role In The Making Of A Major Motion Picture". [[The Philadelphia Inquirer]].
  24. (1986). "The Mission: A Film Journal". Harper & Row.
  25. (25 January 1971). "The Nation: The Berrigans: Conspiracy and Conscience".
  26. "Finding Aid for Daniel Berrigan Papers".
  27. (April 30, 2016). "Father Daniel Berrigan, Anti-War Activist & Poet, Dies". [[Democracy Now!]].
  28. "In 2006 Interview, Fr. Dan Berrigan Recalls Confronting Defense Secretary McNamara over Vietnam War". Democracy Now!.
  29. Nancy Zaroulis. (1989). "Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam 1963–1975". Horizon Book Promotions.
  30. Howard Zinn. (1994). "You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train". Beacon Press.
  31. (January 30, 1968). "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest". [[New York Post]].
  32. (May 17, 1968). "The Catonsville Nine original 5/17/68 footage".
  33. (May 17, 2013). "How the Catonsville Nine survived on film". Waging Non-Violence.
  34. {{cite court. (1969). link
  35. {{cite court. (1971). link
  36. (December 18, 1970). "Grand jury indicts two for hiding Dan Berrigan". Cornell Daily Sun.
  37. {{cite court. (1974). link
  38. {{cite court. (1985). link
  39. (15 September 2024). "ARISE AND WITNESS: Poems by Anne Montgomery, RSCJ, About Faith, Prison, War Zones and Nonviolent Resistance". New Academia/SCARITH.
  40. "A History of Direct Disarmament Actions - The Ploughshares movement originated in the North American faith".
  41. ''Democrats for Life: Pro-Life Politics and the Silenced Majority'', Kristen Day, p.61
  42. Gibson, David. (April 1, 2016). "Daniel Berrigan, anti-war priest, dies at 94".
  43. Goldman, Ari L.. (February 8, 1992). "Religion Notes".
  44. "Consistent Life Individual Endorsers As of January 9, 2017".
  45. (May 2, 2016). "Fr Daniel Berrigan, anti-war and pro-life campaigner, dies aged 94 – CatholicHerald.co.uk".
  46. Mullen, Thomas. (June 2, 1990). "Jesuit Priest's Varied Causes Include Helping AIDS Victims". [[Richmond Times-Dispatch]].
  47. Berrigan, Daniel. (1989). "Sorrow Built a Bridge: Friendship and AIDS". Fortkamp Publishing Company.
  48. (1991). "Notes on Recent Publications". Religious Studies Review.
  49. McClain, Kathleen. (October 11, 1989). "AIDS Attitudes Appall Activist Daniel Berrigan". The Charlotte Observer (NC).
  50. Chris Hedges. (June 11, 2012). "Daniel Berrigan, America's Street Priest, Stands With Occupy".
  51. (January 26, 1996). "Soon 75, Berrigan's is still an edgy God". [[National Catholic Reporter]].
  52. Schneider, N.. (2013). "Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse". University of California Press.
  53. Coy, P.G.. (1988). "A Revolution of the Heart: Essays on the Catholic Worker". Temple University Press.
  54. Labrie, R.. (2001). "Thomas Merton and the Inclusive Imagination". University of Missouri Press.
  55. Berryman, P.. (2013). "Our Unfinished Business". Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
  56. Davis, A.Y.. (2016). "If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance". Verso Books.
  57. Anderson, D.L.. (2003). "The Human Tradition in America Since 1945". Scholarly Resources.
  58. (January 25, 1971). "Rebel Priests: The Curious Case of the Berrigans".
  59. "Adrienne Rich experiment".
  60. "Investigation of a Flame (2003)". IMDb.
  61. Anderson, John. (May 4, 1998). "The IRS Plays Tax and Consequences". [[Newsday]].
  62. (October 1, 2006). "Kisseloff, Jeff. Generation on Fire: Voices of Protest from the 1960s". [[American Library Association]].
  63. (November 29, 2021). "This band wrote a song in honor of Dorothy Day. Now their album could help make her a saint.". America Press Inc..
  64. (September 2016). "The Chairman Dances - Time Without Measure".
  65. Stine, Alison. (April 24, 2022). "The best parts of Starz's Watergate series "Gaslit" are the characters history cast aside". Salon.com.
  66. "Daniel Berrigan Papers (1961–2009)".
  67. (April 17, 1989). "A Landlord Tries to Evict Jesuit Group". The New York Times.
  68. Wylie-Kellermann, Bill. (September 2016). "Death Shall Have No Dominion: Daniel Berrigan of the Resurrection". CrossCurrents.
  69. "WRL Peace Awards".
  70. "Award Laureates".
  71. (April 30, 2016). "OBITUARY: Fr. Daniel Berrigan, S.J., Pax Christi USA Teacher of Peace, passes away at age 94". PAX CHRISTI USA.
  72. "List of Award Recipients | The Peace Abbey FoundationThe Peace Abbey Foundation".
  73. "Honorary Degrees List July 2021".

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