Award presented by DePaul University’s Catholic Studies Department
Kathy Kelly, a Chicago-based peace activist and nonviolence innovator, has been named the sixth recipient of the Berrigan-McAlister Award, presented by DePaul University’s Department of Catholic Studies. The annual award honors those whose Christian acts of nonviolence — like those practiced by Father Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan and Elizabeth McAlister — resist conflict, foster reconciliation, and seek justice and peace for all.
“Kathy Kelly has been everywhere and done everything,” said Michael L. Budde, professor of Catholic studies and coordinator of the Berrigan-McAlister Award Committee. “She has pioneered creative and bold nonviolent initiatives aimed at pulling back the curtain of secrecy surrounding war — from Central America to Iraq, Afghanistan to Sarajevo, and Gaza to nuclear weapons facilities — often at great personal risk and cost, while building friendships and bonds across cultures, borders and ideologies.”
Kelly will be honored May 11 via Zoom and in person on the university’s Lincoln Park Campus. Admission is free. Advance registration is required for in-person and online attendance. She will deliver a public lecture and engage in conversation with in-person and online attendees. The Berrigan-McAlister Award will be conferred during the event.
A peace activist and nonviolence innovator
For more than 45 years, Kelly — a onetime Catholic school teacher in Chicago — has been a leader in the U.S. and around the world in bringing attention to the sufferings caused by warmaking, in calling for nonviolent resolution to conflicts, and in demanding that the perpetrators of warfare be held accountable for their actions. She has pioneered new approaches to deploying nonviolence resistance in conflict zones around the world and has integrated local and transnational peacemaking strategies that have been inspirational to movements around the world.
Kelly has created and led numerous organizations and ad hoc coalitions over her 40-plus years of nonviolent activism. She co-founded Voices in the Wilderness in 1995 to bring medical and relief supplies to Iraq in violation of U.S. economic warfare that led to the large increases of deaths among children under five years of age. As part of Afghan Peace Volunteers and Voices for Creative Nonviolence, she worked in Afghanistan over a 10-year period, engaging in nonviolent war resistance, resource sharing and permaculture, and later with refugee resettlement outside the country. In addition, she was part of initiatives working on the ground in war zones including Sarajevo, Palestine and Lebanon, and as part of Christian Peacemaker Team delegations to Haiti and Iraq.
Her work in active nonviolence encompasses many campaigns within the U.S. These range from longstanding work with the Pledge of Resistance, the Eighth Day Center, Synapses, the Catholic Worker and other important collective efforts in opposition to military interventionism, militarism and nuclear weapons. She served 18 months in federal prison for her role in protests at nuclear weapons and other facilities. Starting in 1980, she became a war tax resister, keeping her taxable income below the federal taxation minimum for 40 years.
Kelly currently serves as board president for World Without War, a nonprofit volunteer network dedicated to eliminating the institution of war; it has more than 170 affiliates and chapters around the world.
About the Berrigan-McAlister Award
Founded in 2021, the Berrigan-McAlister Award is given to a person or organization who exemplifies the practice of active Christian nonviolence. Such nonviolence is rooted in the life of Jesus, who combined the refusal of violence in violent situations with the power of universal love.
From the Civil Rights Movement to the Vietnam War, through the movement against nuclear weapons and beyond, few Catholics in the U.S. have been more influential than the Berrigan brothers (Daniel and Philip) and Elizabeth McAlister (McAlister married Philip Berrigan and was his lifelong collaborator). Their work against war and in support of peace — a life of provocative nonviolent protest, extensive writing and teaching, and everyday experiments in intentional community — has earned them international stature in the Church and secular society.
Previous winners of the Berrigan-McAlister Award are the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, Precious Blood Ministry of Reconciliation, Elizabeth Kanini Kimau, the Los Angeles Catholic Worker, and Oram Haramy.
DePaul Special Collections and Archives holds a portion of Berrigan-McAlister papers, which are available for students and scholars to use.
The Berrigan-McAlister Award is supported by DePaul’s Department of Catholic Studies, the Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology, the Program in Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies, the Division of Mission and Ministry, the University Libraries, and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
