Last summer, he adapted his address to a pro-life gathering at Arlington for Standpoint. Reaction was strong on both sides, among contributors as well as readers. One felt it exuded a "whiff of the Vatican", others that it was uncharitable or even misogynist - perhaps a testimony to the tepidity, or even absence, of the abortion debate in Britain.

Uncompromising on articles of faith, Neuhaus was always gracious in person. In what must have been his last column, for the January issue of First Things, he remarks: "Some call it faithfulness and some call it fanaticism. People get hold of a truth and will not let it go, or a truth gets hold of them and will not let them go."

The truth that would not let Neuhaus go was the hope that God loved not only him but every one of his fellow human beings. While he lay hovering between life and death, he saw a vision of two "presences" beside his bed, and heard a voice that said, quite clearly: "Everything is ready now." Whether these presences were angels, he did not presume to know, but he certainly took their message as a signal that death, whenever it came, could hold no more terrors for him.

Richard John Neuhaus died, aged 72, on 8 January 2009. RIP.