Activist whose protests against the Vietnam War landed him in jail, but who always found ways to channel his outrage into a form of creativity

Dan Berrigan died on the feast day of St Catherine of Siena. Like Catherine, he had been a warrior against war. “We do not see how much harm there is to souls and dishonour to God in war,” Catherine would say. On occasions beyond counting, Dan had said much the same, both in word and deed. Most famously, in 1968, protesting against the Vietnam War, he had been one of nine people (another was his brother Phil) who burned draft records taken from a conscription office in Catonsville, Maryland, an action that put him in prison for two years. Dan said in a statement at the time, “Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlour of the charnel house. We could not, so help us God, do otherwise.”

After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the Berrigan brothers turned their gaze toward nuclear weapons. In 1980 the two of them plus six friends entered a General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and hammered on nuclear weapon nosecones. Their “ploughshare” action drew inspiration from the biblical prophet Isaiah: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore”.