This is exactly right. People who didn't do what John F. Quad wanted them to do, they usually disappeared. John of God was once Brazil's most famous spiritual healer. But in this limited series podcast, we uncover the darker truth behind his global empire of faith and fear. From exactly right and, although in the media, this is Too Faced, John of God. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello! A big news everybody, exactly writes newest podcast, Too Faced, John of God is out now. This is our newest limited series about a Brazilian spiritual healer who claimed he had the power to perform miraculous medical procedures and the dark truth behind that mission. And this is our first limited series presented in both English and Spanish. Hosted by journalists in a Don De Media founder, Martina Castro, the series looks at how belief, power, and silence allowed one man to control his followers for decades. You're about to hear episode one entitled The Last Hope. And once you're hooked on the show, episodes two and three are waiting for you over on the John of God feeds, again available in both English and Spanish. And new episodes of Too Faced, John of God, drop every Wednesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and leave a review because it really helps new shows find their audience. Now please enjoy episode one of exactly right's newest podcast, Too Faced, John of God. Goodbye! Please note that in this episode, there will be a graphic description of an invasive procedure. Listen at your own discretion. A large group of people is praying in Portuguese. They're all dressed in white and seem to be in the main hall of a social club or a community center. But this isn't a normal spiritual gathering. An invasive medical procedure is about to take place. This whole made video is focused on a man who's standing on a small stage. He's also dressed in white, with people huddled around him. He's in his late 60s, with thinning brown hair and a stocky belt. There's a point where you can see his demeanor change. His blue eyes grow wide, and his movements get slower. He's no longer himself. He tells the crowd he's now channeling the spirit of a well-known doctor who died in the 1940s. The man who I'll call the doctor, at a certain point, turns to three people behind him on stage. They're holding metal trays and seem to be his assistants. Right next to them, there's this one guy who sticks out. He's standing stiff as a board up against the back wall with his eyes closed tight as if he's bracing himself for something. The doctor reaches into one of the trays with his bare hand and picks up a long pair of surgical scissors. He uses them to grab a piece of gauze and dips it in water. He then goes up to his patient, the guy standing against the wall with his eyes closed. What happens next is as bizarre as it is disturbing. The doctor tells his patient to open his eyes and tilts his head back with his hand. He then shoves the scissors all the way up his patient's nose and starts twisting them like he's unscrewing the top off a bottle, twisting, twisting, twisting, sliding the scissors deeper as he continues to twist. All this time, the patient is grimacing. Mouth wide open, but he's not making a sound. Then, all of a sudden, the doctor pulls the scissors out of the patient's nose, letting out a tiny stream of blood. The patient is placed in a metal wheel chair and as he's whisked away, you see a smile spread across his face. The video you just heard is from 2009, but there are countless more online recorded over the span of decades. They feature similar procedures all performed by the same man. The renowned spiritual healer, Shoowde de Zeus, John of God. A man who claims to work miracles and heal the sick. He says he's a faith healer and people from all over the world flock to see him. He had healed the wives of ministers, presidents and politicians and owners of big companies and they were... Even Oprah has gone to see him. Over the past four decades, John of God says he's treated millions of people. John of God claims to be a medium, capable of channeling spirits with tremendous powers. Powers that can heal cancer and help people walk again. The treatment he offers can be invasive, like putting scissors up a patient's nose or scraping their eye with a knife. But more often, the spirits have him conduct invisible surgeries, which he can do on many people at the same time without ever touching them. This might sound crazy or very fringe, but I can assure you it is not. Celebrities, Supreme Court judges, lawyers and doctors, thousands of people have traveled to see John of God at his quote, spiritual hospital in southeast Brazil. And not just from other parts of the country, but from as far as Germany, Australia and the United States. Desperate, that's what I was weighing freaking 80 pounds with a child to raise. No doctor figured out what was wrong with me. Nobody told me they were going to cure my father. No doctor, neurologist, neurosurgeon. No one say they could cure him. They could put on my pie. We went to the hospital, we went to multiple doctors, they couldn't figure out what was actually the problem. I went there. You're playing with your belief because you really want to live. All you have is faith. Faith. My name is Martina Castro. I've been an audio journalist for 20 years. And while reporting this story, I've meditated a lot on that word. Faith. And on its power. I'd say I'm a spiritual person. I'm both skeptical of anything that sounds too good to be true. And I like to leave room for the unexplainable. If I were desperate to heal myself or someone I love, I can absolutely imagine myself getting on an airplane to the middle of nowhere to find a miracle cure. But what this story has gotten me to wonder is not about what gets us to have faith in a given thing or a given person. But how long are we willing to hold and keep that faith? Even when we can feel something is not right. I simply thought that Juan's work was spiritual when I first went there. I had no idea that there was a secret behind all of this. Over the course of this series, you'll learn how John of God became a celebrated healer at the center of an international movement. All while behind the scenes, dark secrets started to come out. Intimidation. You think they'll believe me or you. Fraud, sexual abuse and mysterious deaths. It's very difficult and it's very also lonely, one small person against God. From exactly right media and a dom the media. This is Too Faced, John of God. Episode one, The Last Hope. Hola, du bem. Hola, du bem. No, obrigada. This may be broken Portuguese with a woman named Ana Balah. Despite our language barrier and spotty zoom connection, Ana Balah immediately came across as vivacious, warm and confident. She asked we only use her first name to protect her family. Ana Balah ended up seeing John of God out of desperation. But not for herself, for her father. On 2006, Ana Balah's father was diagnosed with late-stage brain cancer. After many surgeries, doctors said there was nothing else they could do for him. He was in a wheelchair and a lot of pain. He couldn't even swallow. So Ana Balah turned to their faith as a last hope. I've always been a spiritist, my entire life. I was born in a spiritist home. And I grew up with relatives performing spiritual surgeries, healing, serogeus, spiritual eyes. According to Ana Balah's beliefs, spirits are non-physical beings that can interact with us. It just so happens that Brazil is said to have the largest concentration of spiritists in the world. And it was this spiritual community that first introduced Ana Balah to John of God. People said very little about John of God. But always with a lot of respect and the certainty of a cure or some spiritual healing. So I remember he had written some books, and I bought them for my father. In one of those books, Ana Balah's father read about a man who John of God cured. A man who had brain cancer. When my father read that, he said, I want to be John of God's next miracle. My father had just become a grandfather, and he wanted to see his grandson grow up. And so we went to Abaddiana. Abaddiana, that's the small rural town in the middle of Brazil, where John of God founded what he calls his spiritual hospital. Abaddiana has about 17,000 residents, and it's an hour and a half drive from the country's capital, Brasilia. Many describe it as a town you drive through to get somewhere else. A major highway cuts it in half with most of the residents and local businesses on one side, and the spiritual hospital, or the Casa, on the other. The Casa is short for Casa de Dominacio de Loyola, or House of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Ana Balah's inability to heal her father through traditional medicine is what led her to this place, along with thousands of others. People in desperate situations they were dying, and they had irrevocably fatal diseases. Then there were people like Michael Baylot. He first visited the Casa from the U.S., because his girlfriend at the time was very sick. Doctors were not able to help her. So they traveled to Brazil to see healers that Michael had read about, and they ended up at the Casa. That's when Michael felt like he witnessed something really incredible happening there. He met people who said John of God cured their cancer. After treatment, some people were able to walk again, after years of being in wheelchairs. Some people said their tumors disappeared. This is real. This guy's actually doing surgery and it's a miracle. I never believed that miracles were real until that point. So Michael decides to stay and live in Abadiania. When I arrived there, I had been going through about a five-year period in my life where I was having a big spiritual awakening. So my frame of mind when I arrived there was very positive and very open, and it was very altruistic also. The situation looked like, my God, there's nobody else in the world that's ever done this. I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to help people. Look at all the people. He's helped millions of people, and he did it for free. So it just sounded really enticing. Soon after moving to Abadiania, Michael became a tour guide to help other people from the U.S. travel there. Many people that went there and said, I have stage four cancer and I had some astasicizing. I'm in agony every day. Help me. I had several clients like that. But then there was this other group of people. About a third of the people that came or a quarter of them, they were just spiritual tourists. They'd heard about this guy and they wanted to have an experience. So a lot of people would go there and just say, can you help me on my spiritual path? So in this middle of nowhere town, in the middle of Brazil, you have these various groups of people coming together. People who were really sick and desperate for a cure, volunteers and spiritual tourists who wanted to be part of this experience. And tour guides like Michael, who were helping both of those groups travel to Abadiania and navigate the culture, the language, and the town. They came together around John of God's mission to bring spiritual healing to thousands of people from around the world. I felt I was part of a very big, big miraculous event that was going to change the world. They told us it was a weather blue, just a glitch. It was a drone. Now it's just AI, I guess. The explanation keeps changing, but the stories don't go away. Video is appearing to show you how far I was flying through the air or real. My name is Payne Lindsay and this is High Strange, an investigative podcast about real encounters. Images of that rotating thing captured by US Navy aircraft. Credible people. We have clear things that we do not understand how they were. I talk to scientists, military witnesses, pilots, and people who saw something they can't unsee. There was no other explanation for what we saw that day. I remembered those faces and they were human. This isn't a show about belief. It's about curiosity, skepticism, and investigation into the unknown. High Strange is available now, wherever you listen to podcasts, listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Cabri Derry Milk bars are made to share, but how do you decide who gets what? If you spend ages looking for the TV remote, you get the most chunks. And if you were 100% without a doubt, not sitting on it, but definitely were. Sorry, you get less. Cabri made to share. Pick up a limited edition bar now. The experience at the Gaza takes place three days a week. It begins when you set foot in the town. Anapala says, from the moment you get there, it's impossible not to get drawn in. The vibe there was just a wonderful vibe. I used to say that it was a little piece of heaven on Earth. First of all, imagine that around 7 a.m., you start to see tour buses arrive. And hundreds of people start to fill the streets, all walking toward the Gaza. Everyone there was wearing white, so white pants, white shirts, white dresses, the whole town. That's Tim Elliott, a journalist from Australia, who went to Abadiania in 2004. He says, in addition to wearing white, you'd see some people walking barefoot. These things were encouraged by John of God so that you could free up your energy to the spirits, and also absorb their healing more easily. And people were blissed out. They're pretty stoked to be. They're pretty happy to be walking around in his presence. And about to see him. Tim admits he went to Abadiania feeling very skeptical about John of God. So I thought it's going to be rubbish, right? But then when you get there, and you have literally thousands of people in white milling around, and everyone tells you how they've been saved by this person, after a while I was like, well, can all these people be wrong? Like, is it possible? Like maybe they're right, maybe they have been saved. And they're all like, I'll show you my medical papers, I'll show you my ex-rays. All that sort of stuff. The first person Tim met at the Gaza was actually one of those people who claimed it to have been cured. She was also from Australia. And she had gone there because she had, I think she said she had some degenerative disease in her back. And so she was finding it really hard to walk. And she swore to me that she was made better and that she could throw her cane away. And she basically regarded it as a miracle, what had happened as a miracle. And said to me, oh, he is pure love. You know, he, that's what he is, the power he radiates is like something from outer space. It's unbelievable. He represented a pillar of a labor of love by hundreds of thousands of people. Marcello Stoduto first arrived at the Gaza back in 1998, much like the woman Tim just described, to seek treatment for an illness. In Marcello's case, it was to treat his scoliosis. But Marcello had another reason he wanted to meet Joao, John of God. He was very interested in honing his own spiritual gifts. Marcello ended up staying at the Gaza to work side by side with Joao as a medium himself, and ended up being part of his community for almost two decades. And then he saw a systematic of the people coming. He says the routine at the Gaza on visiting days was pretty much the same over the years. People would congregate in a big central hall that resembles an open air church, where each person is given a number. Depending on whether you're a first timer coming for a follow-up visit or requesting a physical surgery, like the scissors up the nose, you're called to a different line. The day starts with some announcements. Then everyone recites a series of Christian prayers. Sometimes in three or four different languages. Marcello says once people are told to line up, there are three main rooms where the treatment takes place. A primaida sale. So the first room was the large center room. Toxicador, that was where we detoxify the pain and denser energies that everyone brought to that space. In this first room, everyone sits and prays or meditates. Mediums are also sitting in this room meditating, mixed in with people who are waiting to see John of God. The goal is to clean everyone's energies. So that by the time people see Joao, it will be easier for him to diagnose and treat them. So it was if we were going to compare it with a car. The idea was like a car wash. The person goes through the first room and receives a heavier cleaning. The music and noises you hear in the background are from a homemade video that was filmed in the second room at the Gaza. This is where you actually line up to see John of God. Tim Elliott, the journalist, stood in that line. There's a massive queue. I'm talking a huge queue that sort of snakes around the whole compound leads into this private room that he has. He sometimes occupies. And he walks along, he shuffles along. He sits at the head of this room surrounded by crystals and followers who sort of usher people toward him as you're walking there. All the while, hundreds of people are sitting on either side of you, meditating. And they're meant to be harnessing this huge spiritual energy that it's kind of like spiritual base load power that Jiao can then tap into to perform these incredible, these miraculous deeds that he pulls off. So you walk through this room and you can feel, you know, if you have hundreds of people meditating in one room, there is an energy that comes out of that. There's no doubt about that. So by the time you meet him, you're susceptible and primed for something to believe that someone has power, right? Sometimes I would walk in that chain of prayers on that line and it seemed like I was just in the sea. You know when you're walking through calm waves in the sea? I felt like I was walking in the middle of the waves. It was a very good thing. It was a very good feeling. It was peace. I'd all my delicioses. Delicious aromas, fresh air, very pleasant music, and meditation music, like calm, religious music. So it was like, it really was a little piece of heaven. And all of this is happening before you even talk to John of God. It's designed to be this way. Because according to John of God and other spiritist leaders, your illness is essentially a manifestation of problems with your energy. So as a medium, Marcelo says he doesn't treat the illness. He treats what causes the illness. Because in a healing work, when it's in fact a spiritual healing work, the idea is not to make people get cured of all their physical oils. The idea is to make people come out profoundly more aware of themselves. More spiritualized and transformed in the area of being, feeling and acting with each other. And this activates the mechanisms of the person's immune, physical, and spiritual system to see the healing process and perhaps eliminate physical illness. People who didn't do what John of God said, they usually disappeared. John of God was once Brazil's most famous spiritual healer. But in this limited series podcast, we uncover the darker truth behind his global empire of faith and fear. From exactly right and a Donde media, this is Too Faced, John of God. Listen on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It can take hours to get through the line that Tim and Ana Paula and all the first time visitors have to stand in before they get their moment with John of God. But Tim says you can see him while you're waiting. He didn't say a lot. He was a big guy, physically a big guy, so he had a presence. Finally, Tim got to the front of the line, and it was his turn to meet you all for the first time. So I got to the head of the room, and I think I took his hand briefly and his eyes rolled back into his head and his hand fluttered. So at this point, John of God is channeling a spirit or entity as they're also called. As a medium, his gift is to be able to embody these spirits that diagnose and treat people through him. So technically, in that moment, he isn't himself. He is the entity. And then you're ush on your way. And right, literally, you meet him for, it would have been, I don't know, 10 seconds max. So in those 10 to 30 seconds, he might send you to meditate, or to take a bath in a waterfall they had on the property. He might send you to the third room. That's where John of God conducts invisible surgeries on a large group of people at the same time without ever touching them. If you wanted a physical surgery, you had to request one when you arrived, and they happened in the middle of the day. But more commonly, John of God would scribble down a prescription for you on a piece of paper, telling you how many bottles of blessed water or passion flower herbs to buy at a shop on the property. All the pills were the same, but they were said to be blessed by the spirits to treat your specific problem. And that's how it goes, person after person. But when Anapala meets John of God for the first time, it goes a little differently. So, as I passed by the entity, I would pass by the entity, and the medium would give me crystals, give me candles, give me presents and roses. Again, when Anapala says the entity, she's referring to John of God when he's in a trance. When she calls him the medium, that's when he's himself, and not channeling a spirit. She thinks that she and her father retreated differently from the moment they arrived in Abaddiana, because her father was a well-known and respected lawyer. She could tell people were going above and beyond to make them feel comfortable. Anapala and her father saw John of God many times that year. And her father actually started to get better. He was able to swallow again. And with the help of physical therapists, he even started taking a few steps after being confined for many months to a wheelchair. So, she and her father decided to move to Abaddiana full time for a few months. So, diversaged ways of dealing with the people. Several times I visited John of God, and he would congratulate me on my father. He would ask me to go to his office, and I would always go either with my father's assistant or with my father, but I never went alone. Until one day, Anapala ended up at the casa by herself. She sat down in the meditation room as usual to pray, and she took off her shoes, as recommended by the community there. So, I was there barefoot with my feet on the ground, feeling all that energy, the energy of the place with my eyes closed. And I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I opened my eyes, it was John of God, and he called me to come to his office. I've been to his office several times, never alone. He would even close the door, but this time, I went alone, and as soon as I entered, not only he closed it, but he locked it with a key. At that moment, I felt bad. He said that he was going to do healing work for my father. Anapala felt uncomfortable. Something was not right. But she also wanted to believe what he told her, that this was a special spiritual treatment to heal her father. So, she did as she was told. But what would happen in that room that day, was far from the kind of spiritual experience she had hoped for. No doctor, neurologist, neurosurgeon, no one said they could hear my father. But he said, I'm going to cure your father. You don't get it. This is a healing treatment, and it's your energy. And you represent your father. And I believed it. How did this happen? How did Joao gain an almost blind trust from his followers? In the next episode, we learn how Joao taysheed the Fadiya, became Joao de Deus. John of God. This almost mythical leader of extreme power and influence. It is simply the monstros. It has always been very pleased to be the greatest healer in the world. The venity is expressed there. So, very quickly, they learned that they had to protect him and protect the possibility of him to cure people, you know, to run the business. It's a business, and everyone around him knew that they were part of the business. And then there was a moment that was the crowning of the expansion of the movement, of course, when Oprah Winfrey went. Listen to Too Faced, John of God. On the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There you can also find this show in Espanyol. Just look for dos garas, Juan de Dios. Too Faced, John of God is a production of exactly right media and a Donde media, hosted and written by myself, Martina Castro. Our senior producer is Mariano Pachela, reporting and fact-checking by Iluísa Trellano, production assistants and research by Giovana Romano Sanchez, sound designed by Mauricio Mendoza, and our Mastering Engineer is Martin Cruz. Original music was composed by Mariana Romano. The artwork is by Vanessa Lailac. Ana Paula was interpreted by Giovana Romano Sanchez, and Luciano Miranda Bayandres Cabasero. For exactly right media, the executive producers are Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hard Stark, and Danielle Kramer, with consulting producer Lily Latowig, and associate producer Jay Elias. A special thank you to Michael Baylot, for giving us permission to use audio from his recordings at the Casa. He recently published a book about his time there called Cult of John, The Secret Life of Joao de Dios. We all love a good meal, but there's no feeling quite like cooking one, whether it's everyone at yours for Sunday roast, or after school sausage and mash. Quick, simple, gone in minutes. One thing brings it all together. Ah, bestow, the original gravy. Rich, smooth, and unmistakable since 1908. When the gravy makes the dish, make the gravy. Ah, bestow.
