1: The Last Hope

Summary

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Two-Faced: John of God

Episode 1: The Last Hope

Host: Martina Castro
Date: February 4, 2026
Podcast Network: Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

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Overview

In this gripping first episode of Two-Faced: John of God, host Martina Castro begins an in-depth investigation into João Teixeira de Faria—globally known as John of God—whose reputation as a miracle-working spiritual healer in Brazil attracted millions seeking hope and cures for incurable illnesses. The episode exposes the world he built, the desperation of his followers, and hints at the dark secrets lurking beneath his holy empire, setting the stage for a series exploring faith, power, and the danger of belief.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. John of God: The Miraculous Healer

• Vivid Description of a Ceremony ([02:05])
  • Martina Castro recounts a graphic, infamous healing procedure: John of God (in his late 60s, dressed in white, on stage) channels a 1940s doctor spirit, and, without anesthesia, performs a shocking ritual—twisting surgical scissors deep into a patient's nose in front of a crowd.
  • “What happens next is as bizarre as it is disturbing... Then, all of a sudden, the doctor pulls the scissors out of the patient’s nose, letting out a tiny stream of blood.” ([03:15])
  • This is just one of countless similar videos available online, showcasing “miracles” for his enthralled followers.

2. Celebrity and Elite Endorsement

• John of God's reputation attracted politicians, business owners, and even celebrities like Oprah ([05:32]), fueling a global pilgrimage to his "spiritual hospital" in Brazil.
• “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.” – Anapaula ([05:32])

3. The Power of Desperation and Faith

• Desperation is a recurring theme—people gravitate to John of God as a last hope when modern medicine fails.
• Personal stories:
  • Anapaula, whose father, diagnosed with late-stage brain cancer, sought a miracle at the Casa de Dom Inácio de Loyola in Abadiânia, Brazil.
  • “I went there. You’re playing with your belief because you really want to live. All you have is faith. Faith.” – Martina Castro ([07:13])

4. Origins and Scale of the Movement

• Abadiânia is described as a “nowhere town” transformed into a bustling destination for the gravely ill and spiritual seekers from around the world ([11:32]).
• The Casa (John of God’s spiritual hospital) becomes an international hub, supported not just by faith but by a sophisticated ecosystem: tour guides (like Michael Bailot), volunteers, and spiritual tourists.

5. Experiencing the Casa: Rituals and Environment

• The atmosphere is meticulously crafted: visitors dressed in white, barefoot, “blissed out” on the idea of hope and healing ([17:14]-[18:14]).
• Tim Elliott, an Australian journalist, shares:
  • “When you get there... 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?” ([18:29])

6. Mechanics of a Healing Session

• The healing process is elaborate, involving three main rooms:
  1. First Room: Detoxification through meditation and prayer ([21:03])
     • “It was as if... like a car wash. The person goes through the first room and receives a heavier cleaning.” – Marcelo Stoduto
  2. Second Room: Personal encounter with John of God; he sits amidst crystals, flanked by followers, briefly interacting with each seeker's energy ([22:08]-[22:40]).
  3. Third Room: "Invisible surgeries" performed for groups.
• Sometimes, physical “surgeries”—the notorious scissor-in-nose—are performed by request.

7. Practical and Spiritual Prescriptions

• Most leave with “prescriptions”—identical pills of blessed water or passion flower, said to be spiritually tailored ([28:12]).

8. Insider Perspectives and Red Flags

• Marcelo Stoduto, a former insider, compares the process to “a labor of love,” yet emphasizes it’s about spiritual transformation rather than literal cure ([19:43], [24:17]).
• Not all treatment is equal—Anapaula, whose father was a respected lawyer, notes preferential treatment for influential visitors ([29:17]).
• Small gestures—gifts, personal attention—create an environment of acceptance and belief, even as unease grows for some.

9. Foreshadowing of Abuse and Corruption

• The episode builds towards a pivotal moment of betrayal:

  • Anapaula recounts being called alone into John of God’s office:
    “As soon as I entered, not only he closed it, but he locked it with a key. At that moment, I felt bad.” ([30:35])
  • She is told this is a special treatment for her father, highlighting how "he gained almost blind trust from his followers." ([32:10])

• The episode ends with the promise to uncover how João became “John of God”—and how faith and community protect their leader, even as darker truths emerge.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “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.” – Martina Castro ([07:13])
• “All you have is faith. Faith.” – Martina Castro ([07:13])
• “I have stage four cancer and it’s metastasized and I’m in agony every day. Help me.” – Michael Bailot (as recounted, [14:00])
• “He represented a pillar of a labor of love by hundreds of thousands of people.” – Marcelo Stoduto ([19:43])
• “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 they were part of the business...” – Anapaula ([32:41])
• “He has always been very pleased to be the greatest healer in the world. The vanity is expressed there.” – Marcelo Stoduto ([32:33])

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Timestamps for Major Sections

• [02:05] – Graphic description of a “healing” procedure
• [05:32] – John of God’s famous clientele and celebrity draw
• [11:32] – Arrival in Abadiânia
• [13:01-14:54] – International draw & accounts from Michael Bailot (tour guide)
• [17:14] – The ritual begins: atmosphere at the Casa
• [21:03] – Mechanics of the “healing” rooms (Marcelo Stoduto explains)
• [22:08-22:40] – Tim Elliott’s personal encounter
• [29:09] – Anapaula describes her family’s experience, hints at abuses
• [30:35] – Anapaula’s pivotal (and ominous) solo encounter

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Tone and Style

The episode masterfully balances skepticism, empathy, and immersive storytelling. Martina Castro, with her journalistic background and a personal openness to spiritual questions, guides listeners through a world where faith and desperation collide—never dismissing hope outright, but always questioning how far belief can be pushed before it becomes dangerous.

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Next Episode Preview

The story will continue to dig into João’s rise from humble beginnings to near-mythic status, and the mechanisms by which a movement protected him—even as fraud, abuse, and mysterious deaths began to surface.

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This summary is designed as a comprehensive companion for listeners and non-listeners alike, capturing the episode’s core content, insights, memorable moments, and emotional resonance.

Transcript

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[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

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 homemade 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 build. 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 him, 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 wheelchair and as he's whisked away, you see a smile spread across his. 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 Joo de Deos, John of God.

[Expert/Commentator Marcelo Stoduto]

A.

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Man who claims to work miracles and heal the sick.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

He says he's a faith healer, and people from all over the world flocked to see him.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

He had healed the wives of ministers, presidents and politicians and owners of big.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Companies, and they were Even Oprah has gone to see him.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Over the past four decades, John of God says he's treated millions of people.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

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 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 figuring out what was wrong with me. It engages the acute.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

Nobody told me they were going to cure my father. No doctor, neurologist, neurosurgeon. No one said they could cure him.

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

We went to the hospital, we went to multiple doctors. They couldn't figure out what was actually the problem.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

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. 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?

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

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.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Intimidation, he would always say.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Do you think they'll believe me or you? Fraud, sexual abuse and mysterious deaths.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

It's very difficult and it's very also lonely. One small person against God from exactly.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Right media and adonde. Media this is two Faced John of God Episode one the Last Hope Hola. This is me speaking broken Portuguese with a woman named Anapaula. Despite our language barrier and spotty zoom connection, Anapaula immediately came across as vivacious, warm and confident. She asked we only use her first name to protect her family. Anapaula ended up seeing John of God out of desperation. But not for herself, for her father. Around 2006, Anapala'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, in a lot of pain. He couldn't even swallow. So Ana Paula turned to their faith as a last hope.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

According to Anapaula'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 Anapaola to John of God.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

People said very little about John of God, but always with a lot of. 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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

In one of those books, Anapaula's father read about a man who John of God cured. A man who had brain cancer.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

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 Abadianha.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Abadianha, that's the small rural town in the middle of Brazil where John of God founded what he calls his spiritual hospital. Abadiana 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 Paula's inability to heal her father through traditional medicine is what led her to this place along with thousands of others.

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

People in desperate situations. They were dying and they had irrevocably fatal diseases.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Then there were people like Michael Bailot. He first visited the Casa from the US 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.

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

This is real. This guy's actually doing surgery and it's a miracle. I never believed that miracles were real until that point.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

So Michael decides to stay and live in Abadianya.

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

When I arrived there, I'd 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 I was very altruistic also. So this situation looked like, my God, there's nobody else in the world that's ever done this, and I want to be a part of it. I want 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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Soon after moving to Abadianya, Michael became a tour guide to help other people from the US Travel there.

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

Many people that went there and said, I have stage four cancer and it's metastasized and I'm in agony every day.

[Promotional Voice]

Help me.

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

I had several clients like that.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

But then there was this other group.

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

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?

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

So in this middle of nowhere town in the middle of Brazil, you had 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 Abadianya 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.

[Podcast Host Martina Castro]

I felt I was part of a very big miraculous event that was going to change the world.

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[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

The experience at the Casa takes place three days a week. It begins when you set foot in the town, anapaola says. From the moment you get there, it's impossible not to get drawn in.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

The vibe there was just a wonderful vibe. I used to say that it was a little piece of heaven on earth.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

First of all, imagine that around 7am you start to see tour buses arrive and hundreds of people start to fill the streets, all walking toward the Casa.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Everyone there was wearing white, so white pants, white shirts, white dresses, the whole town.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

That's Tim Elliott, a journalist from Australia who went to Abadianya 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.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And people are blissed out. Yeah, like, they're pretty. They're pretty stoked to be. They're pretty happy to be walking around in his presence, you know, and about to see him.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Tim admits he went to Abadianya feeling very skeptical about John of God.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

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, 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 X rays, all that sort of stuff.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

The first person Tim met at the Gaza was actually one of those people who claimed to have been cured. She was also from Australia and she.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

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, you know, 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.

[Expert/Commentator Marcelo Stoduto]

He represented a pillar of a labor of love by hundreds of thousands of people.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Marcelo Stoduto first arrived at the CASA back in 1998, much like the woman Tim just described, to seek treatment for an illness. In Marcelo's case, it was to treat his scoliosis. But Marcelo had another reason. He wanted to meet Joo, John of God. He was very interested in honing his own spiritual gifts. Marcelo ended up staying at the Casa to work side by side with Joo as a medium himself and ended up being part of his community for almost two decades. He says the routine at the Casa 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. Marcelo says once people are told to line up, there are three main rooms where the treatment takes place.

[Expert/Commentator Marcelo Stoduto]

So the first room was the large central room. That was where we detoxify the pain and denser energies that everyone brought to that space.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

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 Joo, it will be easier for him to diagnose and treat them.

[Expert/Commentator Marcelo Stoduto]

So it was as 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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

The music and noises you hear in the background are from a homemade video that was filmed in the second room at the Gasa. This is where you actually line up to see John of God. Tim Elliott, the journalist, stood in that line.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

There's a massive queue, like, I'm talking, a huge queue that sort of snakes around. The whole compound leads into this primary private room that he has. He sometimes occupies. And you walk along, you shuffle 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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Hundreds of people are sitting on either side of you meditating.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And they're meant to be sort of harnessing this huge spiritual energy that it's kind of like spiritual baseload power that, you know, Xiao can then tap into to perform these incredible, you know, these miraculous deeds that he pulls off. So you walk through this room and you can feel. You can feel. You know, if you have hundreds of people meditating in one room, there is an energy that comes out of that, and 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.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

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, 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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

And all of this is happening before you've even talked 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.

[Expert/Commentator Marcelo Stoduto]

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 ills. The idea is to make people come out profoundly more aware of themselves, more spiritualized and transformed in their way 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.

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[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Meaningful Beauty confidence is beautiful.

[Cindy Crawford]

Learn [e-mail].

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[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

It can take hours to get through the line that Tim and Anapa 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.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

He didn't say a lot. He was a big guy, physically a big guy. So he had a presence.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Finally, Tim got to the front of the line and it was his turn to meet Joao for the first time.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

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.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And then you're ushered on your way and right, literally, you meet him. For it would have been, I don't know, 10 seconds max.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

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 Anna Paula meets John of God for the first time, it goes a little differently.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

I would pass by the entity and the medium would give me cryst, give me candles, give me presents and roses.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Again, when Anapaula 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 were treated differently from the moment they arrived in Abadianya. Because her father was a well known and respected lawyer, she could tell people were going above and beyond to make them feel comfortable. Anapaula 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 Abadianya full time for a few months.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Until one day, Anapaula 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.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Anapaula 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.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

No doctor, neurologist, neurosurgeon, no one said they could cure 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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

How did this happen? How did Joo gain an almost blind trust from his followers? In the next episode, we learn how Joo Teixeira de Faria became Joao de Deus, John of God, this almost mythical leader of extreme power and influence.

[Expert/Commentator Marcelo Stoduto]

He has always been very pleased to be the greatest healer in the world. The vanity is expressed there.

[Interviewee Anapaula]

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.

[Narrator/Reporter Martina Castro]

Listen to Two Faced John of God on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts there. You can also find this show en Espanol. Just look for Dos Caras Juan de Dios. Two Faced John of God is a production of Exactly Right Media and Adonde Media, hosted and written by myself, Martina Castro. Our senior producer is Mariano Pacela, reporting and fact checking by Eloisa Traiano, production assistance and research by Giovanna 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 Lilac. Ana Paula was interpreted by Giovanna Romano Sanchez and Luciano Miranda by Andres Cavacero for Exactly Right Media. The executive producers are Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark and Danielle Kramer with consulting producer Lily Latowig and associate producer Jay Elias. A special thank you to Michael Bailot 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 the Secret Life of Joo de Deus.

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