WASHINGTON, December 15, 2009 (AFP) - US evangelist Oral Roberts, who took his healing powers onto television and founded a university that bears his name, died Tuesday at the age of 91, a representative of his family said.
      
"He had suffered a fall at his home in California over the weekend and when they brought him to the hospital, they discovered he had a slight case of pneumonia," Melany Ethridge of A. Larry Ross Communications told AFP.
      
Roberts' son, Richard, and daughter, Roberta, were at his side when he died Tuesday of complications from pneumonia.
      
Born on January 24, 1918 in Oklahoma, Roberts grew up to become a well known healing evangelist, author, educator and television personality.
      
He is said to have begun his ministry after he was miraculously healed of tuberculosis and a lifelong stammer at the age of 17.
      
"As his older brother drove him to a revival meeting to be prayed for, God spoke to him and said, 'Son, I am going to heal you, and you are to take My healing power to your generation. You are to build Me a university based on My authority and on the Holy Spirit,'" a memorial on his website said.
      
Starting in 1947, Roberts traveled around the United States conducting "miracle healing crusades" for thousands of people in a great "tent cathedral."
      
Over the years, he conducted more than 300 healing crusades in more than 35 countries on six continents.

In 1955 Roberts brought television cameras into his live services, to provide a "front-row seat for miracles" for millions of viewers.
      
He founded Oral Roberts University, a Christian, liberal arts-focussed university on a 500-acre (202-hectare) campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1963 and served as the institution's president until 1993.
      
In the late 1970s, Roberts had the lavish City of Faith Medical and Research Center built for some $250 million, after God had apparently appeared to him and commanded him to construct the complex.
      
In the late 1980s, he stirred controversy when he appealed on his television program for money to send graduates of Oral Roberts' University's medical school to serve on overseas missions, saying God would strike him down if donations fell short of $4.5 million.

Roberts is survived by a son and a daughter, 12 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.