Daniel Berrigan, priest and Vietnam War protester

The Rev Daniel Berrigan, a Roman Catholic priest and peace activist who was imprisoned for burning draft files in a protest against the Vietnam War, has died. He was 94.

Berrigan died at Murray-Weigel Hall, a Jesuit healthcare community in New York after a “long illness”, according to Michael Benigno, a spokesman for the Jesuits USA Northeast Province.

Berrigan and his younger brother, the Rev Philip Berrigan, emerged as leaders of the radical anti-war movement in the 1960s.

The Berrigan brothers entered a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, on May 17 1968, with eight other activists and removed records of young men about to be shipped off to Vietnam.

The group took the files outside and burned them in bins.

The Catonsville Nine, as they came to be known, were convicted on federal charges accusing them of destroying US property and interfering with the Selective Service Act of 1967.

All were sentenced on November 9 1968 to prison terms ranging from two to three-and-a-half years.

Berrigan, a writer and poet, wrote about the courtroom experience in 1970 in a one-act play, The Trial of the Catonsville Nine.

Berrigan grew up in Syracuse, New York, with his parents and five brothers. He joined the Jesuit order after high school and taught preparatory school in New Jersey before being ordained a priest in 1952.

Berrigan wrote poetry. His work captured the attention of an editor at Macmillan who referred the material to poet Marianne Moore. Her endorsement led to the publication of Berrigan’s first book of poetry, Time Without Number, which won the Lamont Poetry Prize in 1957.

Daniel Berrigan.