The late Benedictine Father John Oetgen, a past president of Belmont Abbey College and a monk of the Belmont Abbey Monastery, had a groundbreaking idea: invite the extremely popular evangelist the Rev. Billy Graham to the school for a talk and a degree.
The Rev. Billy Graham, the famous U.S. Evangelical preacher, who was immensely famous in the 20th century for his “Crusades” and acted as an advisor to many U.S. presidents, passed away Feb. 21 at the age of 99. Rev. Graham was known for going beyond the thought of many Evangelical Protestants with an openness to Catholicism, seeing the shared faith and the good works that came from the Catholic Church.
