Billy Graham: preacher, adviser to presidents dies

WASHINGTON: American evangelist Billy Graham, a spiritual advisor to a dozen US presidents, has died at age 99, US media reported, citing family sources.

Tall and handsome, Graham, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, cut a charismatic figure as an evangelical preacher whose huge rallies found audiences on radio and television. He preached to a long line of US presidents, from Harry Truman to Barack Obama, and was featured in the recent mini-series “The Crown” as a spiritual adviser to the young Queen Elizabeth II.

The one-time backwoods minister who eventually became the world’s foremost Christian evangelist, spread a message of spiritual redemption at tent and stadium revival meetings, in a career that spanned decades.

“Billy Graham is the closest thing to a national pope that we shall ever see,” journalist Garry Wills once wrote in The Washington Post. The Southern Baptist preacher was close to the family of President George W. Bush, who once said that a private meeting with Graham in 1985 helped him quit drinking. More recently his role as a sometime spiritual adviser to the young Queen Elizabeth II as she confronted the burdens of rule was featured in the Netflix mini-series “The Crown.”