The late Rev. Billy Graham, with his ability to find "light in darkness" would have been an inspiration in the wake of last week's school shootings in Parkland, Florida, Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan said Thursday.
"Who would have been the first person we went to?" Dolan told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" co-host Bill Hemmer.
"We would have gone to Rev. Billy Graham."
Graham would not have denied the "utter cruelty and the diabolical nature of the sin, hatred, and violence we saw," Dolan continued, but "he would be able to find some light, some reason for hope in all that."
That is what made the legendary evangelist, who died early Wednesday at the age of 99, so effective, Dolan continued.
"He would always point to Jesus on the cross," Dolan said. "He would also tell the stories from the Old Testament where God would bring good from defeat and death and setback, and I think that was his ability to find that light in darkness."
That, he continued, is the story of revelation, of passover, and of Easter, and "we need to hear that."
Dolan also remembered Graham for his speaking style.
"It was his earnestness and sincerity that came through immediately," said Dolan. "When you listen to Billy Graham there is no theatrics here, this guy means it. An utter sincerity."
Meanwhile, Dolan, like other church leaders, said he felt the anguish of parents of children at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last week after the shooting, particularly when he saw a photograph of a mother who had celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass that day and still had the ashes of the sign of the cross on her forehead.
"I thought here is a woman who has experienced not only outwardly, but inwardly, the sorrow and adversity and the setback of the cross, but a woman reaching out with a loving embrace in gratitude to her son and I thought boy, that's Good Friday and Easter," said Dolan.
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