Death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is a major concern for Christian issues

Antonin Scalia, a committed Catholic and the most staunchly conservative judge serving on the US Supreme Court, has died at the age of 79.

The supreme court judge was found dead after retiring early from a party during a hunting trip at a ranch in West Texas on Saturday, the US Marshals Service said.

His death has left a hole on the bench at a time when many of this year’s biggest cases are due to go before the Supreme Court.

The court was due to deal with vital cases to the constitution on abortion rights and  contraception in particular and his death means that an expected outcome of 5-4 in favour of a Republican view is now a 4-4 split vote.

As President Barack Obama promises to uphold his contitutional right to nominate a replacement, the proposition of a more liberal Supreme Court judge being appointed and tipping the balance could have wide-ranging effects on the key issues of abortion and contraception.

For a supreme court judge to be appointed, the president must nominate a candidate and then the US Senate - which has 100 senators - must vote them in by a supermajority, which is 60 out of the 100 votes available.

There is a question over whether the Democratic president will be able to get a new Supreme Court judge nomination confirmed. Currently the Republican party has the majority in the senate with 54 senators compared to 44 Democrats and 2 independents. That means President Obama would need to find a candidate that would be palatable to the more centrist senators on the Republican party to gain the supermajority needed.

Even if he did it is still not certain the vote will go through. Although the Senate has never taken more than 125 days to vote on a successor from the time of nomination - which should give President Obama enough time before his term ends in January - few presidents have successfully filled vacancies announced in their final year.

Also, there is an outside chance that a right-wing Republican senator may try to filibuster the process - that is a senator takes the floor of the senate to speak and refuses to yield thereby forcing the debate to run out of time before a vote can take place. The last time a vote on the nomination of supreme court judge was filibustered was 1968 - though Senator Ted Crux who is campaigning for the Republican nomination to run for president has already said that he would filibuster any nomination of President Obama.

Scalia, was considered to be the most influential supreme court judge of the last 25 years and the leader of a renaissance in conservative intellectual thinking in the US.

Born on 11 March, 1936, he was the only child of two devout Roman Catholics. He attended the Jesuit high school Xavier in New York, and he was top of his class at the Jesuit Georgetown University. He kept his religious roots close to him throughout his life and career: he had a portrait of St. Thomas More, in his Supreme Court office.

An incisive wit he once described having nine children with his wife, Maureen, “Vatican roulette”. In his 2009 biography he said: “We were both devout Catholics… And being a devout Catholic means you have children when God gives them to you, and you raise them.”

He worshipped frequently at St Catherine of Siena in Great Falls, Virginia, according to NPR.com, because it was one of the few Catholic parishes in the Washington, DC, area that still offered a Latin mass.

"He was an extraordinary individual and jurist, admired and treasured by his colleagues," colleague Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement. "His passing is a great loss to the court and the country he so loyally served."