Deaths

* Philip Berrigan, a former Catholic priest who became famous for his protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s as one of two Berrigan brothers, died at age 79 on December 6 in Baltimore's Jonah House, an activist community he co-founded in 1973 with his wife, a former nun. He decided to end chemotherapy treatment for liver and kidney cancer last October. His priest-brother, Daniel Berrigan, officiated at last rites November 30. Philip, who spent a third of the last three decades in prison for civil disobediance acts protesting war and militarism, came to wide national attention in 1968 when he and Daniel Berrigan were among the Catonsville Nine who took draft records out of a federal office in the Maryland suburb of Baltimore and burned them outside with homemade napalm. He poured blood over draft files in another protest. In the 1980s and 1990s, he was involved in actions of what became known as the Plowshares Movement, in which he and others secretly entered military bases and did symbolic damage to warheads and other weapons. Philip Berrigan wrote more than half a dozen books, including his 1996 autobiography, Fighting the Lamb's War: Skirmishes with the American Empire.

* Veteran religion reporter Willmar Thorkelson, 84, who covered the religion beat for more than five decades, died November 29. Thorkelson, who had been ill with Parkinson's disease, reported on religion for the Minneapolis Star from 1944 until 1982 when the newspaper merged with the Tribune. A lifelong Lutheran, he continued to work as a free-lancer and publicist for almost two decades. He also contributed news reports to the CENTURY over many years. A former president of the Religion Newswriters Association, he was given the RNA's first lifetime-achievement award in 2001. "Bill" Thorkelson was cited as probably the only journalist to work at all eight assemblies of the World Council of Churches. He took a leave of absence from the Star in 1948-49 to work as a WCC press officer in Amsterdam. He also served the WCC press office at Harare, Zimbabwe, in 1998. For the Star he reported on the 1963-65 sessions of the Second Vatican Council.

* Glenn Archer, the first executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, died November 15 at the age of 96. Archer, who lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, began leading the religious liberty watchdog group in 1948, a year after it was founded. "Glenn Archer was a figure of towering energy and intellect," said Barry Lynn, current executive director of the Washington-based organization, in a statement. When Archer began his post, the organization was called Protestants and Other Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The organization changed its name in the 1960s.

* Dwight E. Loder, 88, the president from 1955 to 1964 of what is now Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary and a United Methodist bishop who headed the denomination's Council of Bishops from 1974 to 1975, died November 9 at his home in Worthington, Ohio, after a lengthy illness. While a bishop, he headed the United Methodist's missions from 1968 to 1972.

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