"The passing of Father Neuhaus is a great loss to the IRD and to the causes we fight for and represent." - IRD President James Tonkowich

Contact: Jeff Walton, The Institute on Religion and Democracy, 202-682-4131, jwalton@TheIRD.org

WASHINGTON, Jan. 8 /Christian Newswire/ -- Father Richard John Neuhaus, the influential Roman Catholic priest and writer, the primary author of the Institute on Religion and Democracy's 1981 founding manifesto, "Christianity and Democracy," passed away this morning due to complications from cancer.

Neuhaus, 72, served on the IRD board until today. His work at the New York-based Institute on Religion & Public Life and at the influential journal First Things was far-reaching, leading to the friendships between religious leaders from many Christian traditions as well as political decision makers.

Neuhaus was a major force behind the "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" movement, which brought the two closer in common theological affirmations and public witness.

IRD President James Tonkowich commented:

"The passing of Father Neuhaus is a great loss to the IRD and to the causes we fight for and represent.

"Neuhaus sought to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society, one in which the extremes of theocracy or rigid secularism were declined in favor of open engagement between religion and public life.

"The Institute on Religion & Democracy is indebted to the steady intellectual and spiritual foundation that Neuhaus helped lay and continued to nurture."

The Institute on Religion and Democracy, founded in 1981, is an ecumenical alliance of U.S. Christians working to reform their churches' social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, thereby contributing to the renewal of democratic society at home and abroad.

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