A feud is threatening to tear apart the family of the Rev Billy Graham, the evangelist, over the final resting place of the man who has counselled presidents and preached in more than 180 countries.

Dr Graham, 88, has Parkinson’s disease and is almost blind, but he is fully aware and is dismayed by an increasingly destructive dispute between his two sons over where his and his wife’s burial place should be.

Franklin, 54, the heir to his father’s immensely wealthy worldwide ministry, has been building a giant mock barn and silo near Charlotte, North Carolina, which he says will be a reminder of his father’s early childhood on a nearby dairy farm and serve as his final resting place.

When visitors enter the barn — designed with help from consultants who worked for the Walt Disney corporation — they will be greeted by a talking mechanical cow and rooms full of multimedia exhibits. They will eventually be led into a garden where, under Franklin’s plans, his father and mother, Ruth, will be buried.

Ruth Bell Graham, 86, also very frail, is implacably opposed to the plan, as is the couple’s younger son, Ned, 48. She wants to be buried in Cove, North Carolina, close to where she raised her five children and home of the original Billy Graham training centre.

In an extraordinary plea for help by Ned Graham, a Washington Post reporter was invited to attend a meeting between the Graham parents and Patricia Cornwell, the crime writer, who has been close to Mrs Graham since she was a child. After touring the near-completed barn, Ms Cornwell told Dr and Mrs Graham: “I was horrified by what I saw.” She described the building as “truly tacky” and was particularly disturbed by the several opportunities visitors will be given to put their names on a mailing list.

Ms Cornwell told Dr Graham in the presence of The Washington Post: “I know who you are and you are not that place. It’s a mockery. People are going to laugh. Please don’t be buried there.”

After the meeting, Mrs Graham dictated a statement, notarised by a lawyer, repeating her opposition to the new site. “My final wish is to be buried at Cove. Under no circumstances am I to be buried in Charlotte, North Carolina,” it said.

Dr Graham initially opposed the barn — which Franklin wants to call a memorial library — but, convinced by his older son that it would perpetuate his teachings after his death, he finally agreed. Franklin told The Washington Post that he was preparing both the barn and Cove as burial sites for his parents but said: “Some board members feel that the library ought to be the place.”

Stuck in the middle is Dr Graham, who must now choose between the wishes of his wife and younger son, and those of his heir. “I’ll just think and pray about what you’ve said,” he told Ms Cornwell.

His own words

“The centre of my life now is my children”

“When you read in the paper ‘Billy Graham is dead’, know that I will be with my Father in Heaven”

“I love [my wife] more now and we have more romance now than we did when we were young”

“The end of the world system as we know it is definitely on the horizon”

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