Under The Tent With John Paul

After weeks of earnest prodding from the Vatican, the Rev. Billy Graham has decided to accept an invitation for a joint September speaking appearance with Pope John Paul II in Columbia, S.C. The meeting, which will be attended by two dozen other ecumenical leaders, will mark the first time that Graham, the world's best-known Protestant, has preached alongside a Pope. It will also be John Paul's first important acknowledgment of the evangelical movement. Some conservative Protestants who are hostile to Roman Catholicism urged Graham to stay away; indeed, the president of Graham's denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, is bypassing the event. But Graham may feel an obligation toward the Pope, who, as Karol Cardinal Wojtyla, permitted the evangelist to speak in a major Cracow church in 1978. Graham faces a tight schedule: a week after the ecumenical encounter, he will pay his first visit to China.