Dear Editor: I have just returned from the wake and funeral Mass in Manhattan for Father Daniel Berrigan, S.J. He was a moral giant and, like Father Des Wilson, Father Raymond Murray and Father Joseph McVeigh, a brother and great friend of the Irish in the North who want to rid England of its last colony, forever. He will be sorely missed.
Father Daniel Berrigan traveled with me to the North of Ireland twice in the early 1980s. When I first called him and asked if he could help us in our struggle to get better conditions for Irish prisoners in British jails, he said, “Of course. I have been waiting for your call,” although we had never before met nor spoken to one another.
During those trips, Dan, along with his two brothers Philip and Jerry, championed the rights of Irish Republican prisoners and those who suffered under British rule in the North of Ireland. The trips took place during the H-Block struggle, which culminated in the deaths of 10 men on hunger strikes in Long Kesh prison. Back in New York, Dan was arrested as part of his support for the prisoners’ five just demands.
Dan also helped us to start the Irish Political Prisoners Children’s Fund in America, which brought these same prisoners’ children and siblings to our shores for a vacation every summer. Whenever we – the New York H-Block/Armagh Committee and the Irish Political Prisoners Children’s Fund – asked him to help, Dan always said, “Yes.”
Dan continued to help us over the years and never forgot us, and never forgot Ireland. It is no coincidence (for, as a matter of faith, I believe Divine Providence is coincidence) that his wake was held on May 5 – Bobby Sands Day – which marks the anniversary of the first man to die on hunger strike in Long Kesh prison.
Some years later, he performed the wedding for my wife Annie and me in Brooklyn. We grew to love him and love him still.
On behalf of the Irish prisoners and families who he helped as well as the Irish-Americans whom he supported, we want to say, Go raibh maith agat agus beannacht, a Dan!
Thank you and bless you Dan!
Requiescat en pace, Father Dan!
GEORGE MCLAUGHLIN
Providence, R.I.
Editor’s Note: George McLaughlin is the former chairman of the New York H-Block/Armagh Committee.
Dear Editor: Father Dan Berrigan, S.J., was our English teacher at Brooklyn Prep in 1955. They were memorable classes, never boring. His favorite poem was Francis Thompson’s “The Hound of Heaven” which we memorized. Perhaps a fitting tribute to him would be lines 170-176:
“Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child’s mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!”
BROTHER EDWARD KENT, O.S.F.
Fresh Meadows
Editor’s Note: In 1955, Edward Kent was the Student Council President at Brooklyn Prep, which was located on Carroll St. in Crown Heights and was part of the Jesuit-run St. Ignatius parish. The all-boys school closed in the early 1970s.