Philip Berrigan Biography

A World War II artillery and infantry officer, Philip Berrigan did an about-face after becoming a Catholic priest and devoted his life to opposing what he saw as warlike, imperialist U.S. policies.

Berrigan came to public attention in 1967 and 1968 for acts of civil disobedience that included destroying draft files with blood and fire at Selective Service offices in Baltimore and Catonsville, Maryland.

For the latter he and his brother, Daniel, also an activist priest, spent nearly two years in federal prison.

Excommunicated for marrying in 1973, Phil lived the last third of his life in an intentional community, Jonah House, which he and his wife — former nun Elizabeth McAlister — formed in Baltimore.

In 1980, Phil led a group that trespassed at a Pennsylvania electric plant and used blood and hammers to damage a partially assembled nuclear warhead.

This inspired more such events at military bases and industrial sites in what has become known as the “Plowshares” movement, named for passages in the biblical books Isaiah and Micah that speak of beating “swords into plowshares.”