Father Neuhaus, iconic U.S. theologian, is dead at 72

The Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, a theologian who transformed himself from a liberal Lutheran leader of the civil rights and anti-war struggles in the 1960s to a Roman Catholic beacon of the neoconservative movement of today, died on Thursday in New York. He was 72 and lived in Manhattan.

He learned he had cancer in November and recently developed a systemic infection that doctors say led to his death, said Joseph Bottum, editor of"First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion, Culture and Public Life," of which Father Neuhaus was editor-in-chief.

Father Neuhaus's best-known book,"The Naked Public Square," argued that American democracy must not be stripped of religious morality. The book, published in 1984, provoked a national debate about the role of religion in affairs of state and was embraced by the burgeoning Christian conservative movement.