A renowned poet, Jesuit priest, and antiwar activist, Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016) has been called “the conscience of a generation.” He became a household name in 1968, when he seized draft records at Catonsville, Maryland, and burned them with napalm, galvanizing a protest movement and igniting widespread religious opposition to the Vietnam War. “Better the burning of paper than of children,” he told the judge. Berrigan published over fifty books of poetry, essays, and scripture commentaries in his lifetime. He was also arrested more than fifty times for creative acts of nonviolent civil disobedience and spent several years in prison.
