Luis Palau, globe-trotting evangelist, is dead at 86 Over the past half century, the Luis Palau Association, based in Beaverton, Oregon, estimates that it has reached 30 million people in 75 countries. Luis Palau at the Twin Cities Festival in August 2004. Photo by Steve Smith, courtesy of the Luis Palau Association March 11, 2021 (RNS) — Luis Palau, a Christian evangelist known for his smile and hearty laugh and described by some as “the Latino Billy Graham,” died Thursday (March 11) at his Portland, Oregon, home. He was 86. Over the past half-century, the Luis Palau Association, based in Beaverton, Oregon, estimates that it has reached 30 million people in 75 countries. Under its Argentine-born founder’s leadership, the association “has coordinated hundreds of citywide campaigns in dozens of nations, including major evangelistic festivals on five continents.”