Billy Graham, the man symbol of the Evangelicals in the United States, is gone. He was a great admirer of John Paul II and helped to ease relations with the Catholics.
They called him “the pastor of America”. And not only for his acquaintances with the White House’s tenants since Eisenhower’s times, or for his sermons in critical moments such as the September 11 attacks. Billy Graham - who died yesterday at 99 years after a long illness - was the face that more than any other in the twentieth century, embodied the new dynamism of evangelical Protestantism. A bizarre ranking published by the Ladies Home Journal a few years ago had him in second place - behind God – under the category “achievements in religion”.
A little more soberly, it can be said that he was one of the most important preachers of the twentieth century, not only for the millions of people met all over the world, but also for his intuitive and massive use of mass media for evangelization.
Billy Graham was born in North Carolina in 1918, and during his youth, he did not show great enthusiasm for religion, until the day he met a travelling pastor who made him a born-again Christian.
He became pastor of the Southern Baptist Church and a celebrity at the age of 31. In 1949, he planted a handful of tents in the center of Los Angeles for an “Evangelization Crusade”. The message was very straightforward: “accept Jesus in your heart and your life will change”. The oratory ability of that young and handsome preacher - together with his firmly conservative approach – were much appreciated by the media magnate Randolph Hearst who helped him turn into a legendary televangelist.
His “Crusades” grew in number in every corner of the United States: unprecedent was the one he held in 1957 at Madison Square Garden in New York; on that occasion, he also invited Martin Luther King to speak, taking a position in favor of civil rights. He was, however, soon criticized by the most liberal wing of the traditional Protestant world for his scarce activism for the marches in favor of black people.
But Billy Graham’s key aspect was his way of preaching: his exhorting listeners to a personal return to the Bible, a call to individual conversion rather than a social doctrine. This message soon brought him to the television screens, turning him into the quintessential televangelist. He also preached outside America during his borderless missionary trips: he managed to go to former Soviet Union already in 1982; and even Kim Il-sung welcomed him in North Korea. Official statistics of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association speak of three million people returning to the Christian faith after listening to him. George W. Bush himself told it was thanks to Graham’s movement that he rediscovered Christian life.
A life marked by no scandal - that of Graham - even though his organization had soon become a great empire.
In Billy Graham’s parable, however, there is also another important chapter concerning the relationship between Evangelicals and Catholics in the United States. Already in the early 1950s - when mutual distrust was still widespread - Graham tried to involve Catholics in his missionary campaigns from one end of America to the other. This caused him to be criticized by the most extreme wing of his community, but also led him to become friends with someone like Fulton Sheen, auxiliary bishop of New York, who was also very active in preaching through on TV with a similar-in-many-ways style. Although he supported Richard Nixon’s election campaign, Billy Graham in the early 1960s, did not fail to pray at the White House next to John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the first - and so far - only Catholic president of the United States, thus breaking another taboo.
But the most important meeting point with the Catholic world came with his proximity to John Paul II: a closeness cemented certainly by the anti-communism sentiment they both shared, but also by a sort of evangelizing anxiety. Karol Wojtyla had been among those Polish bishops, who had not opposed Billy Graham’s desire to go to the great Catholic country beyond the Iron Curtain. Wojtyla would even have met him personally in Krakow in October 1978 if he had not been forced to leave – unexpectedly - for Rome for the death of John Paul I. Actually, Graham found himself living the unforeseen election of Wojtyla in Poland. A circumstance that impressed him to the point of asking the Pope for a private audience, another shocking gesture for the evangelical world of that time. The meeting took place in 1981 and when Graham would recall that day, he loved to repeat the words “we are brothers” that John Paul II would have said to him. That “face to face” was not only the encounter between two great personalities, but the beginning of a journey of mutual understanding between the Catholic Church and the Protestant one that the great televangelist embodied.
Among his legacies, Graham left us the document “Evangelical and Catholics together” in 1994, promoted by a group of academics including George Weigel and Richard Neuhaus. And then - in 2000 - the Vatican decided to send a Catholic delegation to the Conference on the Global Mission in Amsterdam promoted by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. When Woityla died in 2005, the preacher did not hesitate to define the Polish Pope as “the most influential voice for the promotion of morality and peace in the world over the last 100 years”.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the death of Billy Graham has been commented on in these hours also by many voices of the US Catholic world. The Episcopal Conference spread a message of condolence signed by its President, Cardinal Daniel Di Nardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Huston, “Billy Graham a preacher of God’s word – he wrote - not only in his sermons, but also in the very life he lived. His faith and integrity invited countless thousands around the world into a closer relationship with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God for his ministry.”
“Like everyone who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s - the Cardinal Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, declared - “I can say that it was hard not to notice and be impressed by the Rev. Billy Graham. There was no question that the Dolans were a Catholic family, firm in our faith, but in our household, there was always respect and admiration for Billy Graham and the work he was doing to bring people to God”.
Even a figure highly esteemed by the liberal wing of American Catholicism such as the Archbishop of Chicago, Cardinal Blase Cupich, paid homage to the evangelical leader, “We give thanks for the Christian witness of the Rev. Billy Graham, - he tweeted - a man who put his trust in God, and who is now called home “.
