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. He was 94.
Berrigan’s death on Saturday was confirmed by Rev. James Martin, also a Jesuit priest and editor-at-large of America magazine, a national Catholic publication put out by the Jesuits, the New York daily said.
Father Berrigan died in Murray-Weigel Hall, the Jesuit infirmary at Fordham University in The Bronx.
He was recognized in the 1960s as a Catholic intellectual of the “new left” who articulated a vision that racism, poverty, militarism and capitalist greed were interconnected and were parts of the same larger problem – an unjust society – the Times said.
Also a poet, Father Berrigan received the Lamont Prize in 1957 for his poetry collection “Time Without Number,” and, in addition, was a professor at Fordham University.
Berrigan, his brother and fellow priest Philip and Trappist monk Thomas Merton founded an inter-ecclesiastical coalition against the Vietnam War.
More than 58,000 young Americans died in the conflict in the Southeast Asian nation, where Washington deployed more than 500,000 troops.
Berrigan gained recognition in 1968 when he traveled to Hanoi to receive three U.S. military pilots who were the first prisoners of war to be released by the North Vietnamese since the start of the U.S. bombing campaign.
In that year, along with other activists, he was sentenced to three years in prison for burning draft cards and other military induction records using homemade napalm