2: A Healer is Born

I'm back with more one-off interviews with some truly kick-ass women on the Girl Friends Spotlight. I'm going to climb it! Is badness hereditary? Let's see how we can stop feeling. I'm not too intimidated by her.

What are you talking about?

“Listen to the Girl Friends Spotlight on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,”

or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Danielle Robay, host of Bookmarked, the podcast by Reese's Book Club. And this week we are talking about a monster, or maybe the woman who refused to be one. I'm sitting down with Maggie Gillin Hall to unpack her new film The Bride. And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein.

What I was more interested in was the monstrousness inside of each of us. You can spend your life running from those things, or you can turn around and shake hands with them. Listen to Bookmarked, the Reese's Book Club podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You.

The new podcast from the exactly right network.

“Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on from blockbusters to deep cuts.”

Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, I guess, let's start just a, you introduce yourself. My name is Kirina G***, I'm from Brazil. I moved here with my family when I was 16 years old.

And at first, it was supposed just to be one year to learn English.

But once they got to the US, Kirina's mom decided to stay. So, they've lived here ever since. Still, Kirina has family back in Brazil. So, she asked us only to use her first name to protect them. It's the my personal nail that it should question everything.

Since they won, that I understand myself as a person, but I needed help. Kirina was a single mom, getting out of an abusive relationship and dealing with mental illness. Despite how tough she sounds today, it's important to her to make clear that back in 2013, she was not herself.

The grief of ending that relationship that was abusive, the grief of leaving the sun behind, the grief of things not being working for a long time here.

Basically, I had no way to live. I was not going to kill myself,

because I don't believe in suicide, but I would pray and say, "I hope I go to bed tonight and I just don't wake up." That I had it every day. She tells me her mind was just not there. And that's when she came across an interview on TV that caught her attention.

“I think I was 32 or 33 and then I had watched the Oprah show promoting Joan of God.”

This is an interview I wasn't sure it would ever happen. One of the most famous. I mean, she did a great job convincing that it was great. I wasn't the only one that went there, I tell you that. There are many inflection points in the story of how John of God rose to fame, but this is the one that came up again and again in my interviews for the series.

The Oprah actor, when Oprah was there, he was visited by ministers and politicians, by celebrities, our even Oprah. The crowning of the expansion of the movement, of course, when Oprah Winfrey went. This last voice belongs to Christina Rocha. She's a professor of anthropology in Australia, but she's originally from Brazil.

When she first became aware of John of God, she was mostly interested in his popularity among foreigners.

She couldn't help but wonder, why foreigners who have the best hospitals, best doctors in their own countries, they would fly to Brazil a long flight to be in a village that doesn't have hospital if something goes wrong, and to be operated on by this guy whom they can't communicate with, who lives in a little village in the middle of nowhere, and he cuts people, open with no accepts his or an aesthetics. Christina spent more than a decade trying to find an answer.

It's a story that starts when John of God was just show-out. A man raised in a really poor

and had been accused of being a fraud. And thanks to a series of calculated decisions, over the course of several decades, he went from that to becoming an internationally renowned and influential killer, who would draw thousands of people to believe in him. From exactly right media and Adon de Media, this is two-faced John of God. I'm your host Martina Castro.

“Episode two, a healer is born. When was the first time you ever heard of John of God?”

Well, I can't remember the first time because he was huge in Brazil. It was like part of our

you know, system identity. It was like a thing in Brazil to go to John of God. This is Christina Phoebe, a Brazilian journalist. Just to be clear, this is not Christina Rocha, who you heard at the beginning. You're gonna hear from two Christina's in this episode. And both of them have written books on John of God. This Christina knew very well who John of God was at the height of his fame. But it wasn't until she did the research for her book that she learned

who he was before that. Even then, Christina says the story she uncovered included a lot of inconsistencies. What she was able to confirm is that way before he was known as John of God, he was simply Xiaowau to shade a defedia born in 1941 in a small town in Guayas, a state in the center of Brazil. And when he was growing up, very, very poor family, the family was like trying to make some money out of anything. Some people say Xiaowau's mother was a palm reader,

or fortune-teller. Others that his father was a tailor and that he sold herbal remedies to make ends meet. But what is clear is that Xiaowau, the youngest of six siblings, was learning the family business from an early age. So he learned a few things like he learned to do those, like, it's a drink to cure things. And he would say that he read the

“future as a small child he did that. So he was like a family doing anything to survive, you know?”

A story Xiaowau himself has told many times is about when he first discovers his ability to

predict the future. It's unclear whether he was nine or 16 years old, Xiaowau himself has claimed it happened at different ages throughout the years. But what is consistent is the story of what happened. Xiaowau was walking with his mom down a dirt road on a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, but he turns to her and says a big storm is coming. Given pointed out the houses that would be destroyed by it, a storm did actually hit the town and caused 40 structures to collapse.

This mythical origin story is repeated again and again by news outlets and Xiaowau himself.

“But it's important to point out that the claims of this kind of clairvoyance or supernatural power,”

they weren't unique where Xiaowau grew up. The concept of healers and mediums was very common in central Brazil. And there were also at this time a few healers that used the techniques that Jonathan Godwood used after, like, cutting people without any, like, medical preparation or, you know, there are even videos of some famous healers conducting very similar surgeries back in the 1940s. But Xiaowau's path to becoming Xiaowau de Deus or John of God didn't begin an earnest until

he joined the military in 1964. Very, very young. He went to the military. It was, at that time, we had a military dictatorship in Brazil. So he very, really understood that he needed to be

close to powerful people so he would get rid of any accusations and stuff. That's because it was

actually illegal in Brazil to perform anything that could be perceived as medical treatment if you weren't a doctor. You could be fined or thrown in jail. It's unclear what Xiaowau did while he was in the military. But we do know he traveled to bases around the country. Christina also says Xiaowau worked for a time sewing and repairing military uniforms. And then while he did that, he began to cure military for, you know, and tell them that he had such powers and stuff. So they would recommend

to do that. So I feel like he constructed this personality very smuggling and slowly.

“So in the military, as Christina says, Xiaowau gained some credibility and powerful friends.”

When he left military service, he went to Annapolis, a city in the state of Guayas, and he just made like a small house, a small living room where he would receive people to to cure and to do spiritual healing and stuff. And they spread the word. And they started to making very huge lines. And then he was denounced for the local council of medicine. It was still illegal in Brazil to practice medicine if you weren't a formally trained doctor. So Xiaowau speaks of this phase of his

life as a time of persecution. He is said to have been thrown in jail several times. He sets up this idea that he tugs on for decades that the traditional medical establishment was out to

“get him because of his healing powers. So he was sort of expelled from Annapolis to Abajana.”

And he goes to Abajana in Accordu in a arrangement. He makes an arrangement with the mayor. So my take into this, my interpretation is, he needed a place to get established and to cure people, he had lines and everyone wanted him. And the mayor needed any economic, you know, savior, any financial source, anything going on in a town that were nothing goes on. So a kind of pact is made between Xiaowau and the mayor of Abajana. The place where he would really grow his empire.

So they did an arrangement and they gave Joan of God a little house and a big area. So he could establish himself. And that little house was named the Casa de Dominacio de la Yola. It officially opened its doors in 1979 and became the spiritual hospital at the center of this international movement. Christina says word spread quickly of Xiaowau's arrival. And very quickly he was like whoa huge lines and lines and many, many people going for him.

The city at the time had little to no infrastructure. According to one source, the town had two hostels with maybe 20 beds, max, and most roads weren't even paved. Over the coming years as a while grew in popularity, people in Abajana would seize on this new opportunity. They would start taxi services or driving buses, open new restaurants and hostels called Posadas. So he was like a big business deal to be friends with John of God and to open a hotel because

it was going to be huge. So you could run like the bus business, the taxi business, the, you know, spiritual healing crystals, whatever. It was like a very diversified. You could do so many things if John of God was 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. It was a multi-million dollar business. By some

estimates, the gaza alone was bringing in revenue of almost $135,000 a month. That doesn't include donations or the commissions show how received from every person who did business related to the gaza. Over the course of the following decades, show how takes a hold of this town's economy and he cleverly sets his sights on what will cause this business behind the gaza to really take off. Foreign visitors.

“Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police?”

Welcome to Boys and Girls. The podcast by dating isn't dating.

A ranged marriage is basically a reality show, except the contestants are strangers and

your entire family is judging. You're sitting coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another and praying your carmy can or Bobby appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in hoping to find love the right way and instead I found chaos, cringe and comedy.

the arranged marriage carousel. For me, talk world, the near misses, the heartbreak and let's not forget all the jokes. Listen to Boys and Girls on the iHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on? Biggie. You put on big game and you feel uncomfortable? So I want to get confident. This is DJ Hesterprint's music is therapy, a new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist that asks one simple question.

Who do you want to be and what's the song that can take you there? Music changes what you feel and what you feel changes what you do, right? That moment where a song shifts something inside you, that's where transformation starts. This year, I'm talking to experts across every area of life, like personal finance, icon, jean, chatsy, New York Times, journalist, David Gellis, relationship, legend, dance, savage, human connection teacher, Mark Grogues, and the man who

shaped my ear more than anyone, Questlove. They'll bring the strategies, I'll pair them with the right records and we'll teach you how to use the music to make change stick. This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for your entire ear. Listen to DJ Hesterprint's music is therapy, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin.

This season on my podcast, here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policy makers and

performers that compose a Mark Shaman. Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. You know, Robin Eye was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbits for hours and then

“eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time”

together, laughing. Lawyer, Robbie Kaplan. The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. You can really make a difference to causes, and I say to if you bring the right case at the right time in Eric. Yeah, when there's the perfect example. And journalist Chris Whipple, every White House staffer, they work in a bubble called the West Wing, and it's exponentially more so in the Trump White

House. Listen to the new season. Up here's the thing on the iHeart Radio app or wherever you get

your podcasts. I was in Australia and I started hearing people say, "Oh, you're from Brazil, you must know John of God." That's Christina Roche again, the professor. By the way, she sounds a little muffled because she wore a mask during her interview. She says around 1998, 1999, when she was studying for a PhD in Australia, she had no idea who John of God was, but oddly enough, he was pretty famous in Australia because a lot of people from all walks of life.

So from the hairdresser to the dance teacher to somebody at the university doing the PhD with me, everybody was saying, "Look, do you know John of God? He's very famous." And I would say, "No, I don't." And they would say, "So you're not Brazilian because he is so famous,

“you know, you should know him." So the next time Christina went back to Brazil to visit family,”

she decided to go to Abadiania to see what all the fuss was about. This was in 2003.

She says what she saw when she first arrived, totally caught her off guard. Imagine 2003,

there was no what we called broadband, not even Wi-Fi. Broadband in tiny little villages in Central Brazil. But in Abadiania, this rural middle of nowhere town, there was Wi-Fi and much, much more. They had, you know, cafes with the menu, all in English, and they had things that he would get, nodding some while we were real, like drinks and things that he would have in Sydney, the cool, you know, flat white kind of thing or done the lion, lattes, and stuff. And they had it there,

and I was like, "What is this place?" And all, you know, they're Tibetan flags, and all this, and most people spoke English, and all the languages, not Portuguese. She was so intrigued, and her curiosity was peaked for professional reasons. Christina's specialty is religion and migration. So when she saw this growing international community, going to Abadiania to receive these rudimentary surgeries at the Casa, she decided she just

had to find out more. So I studied that from 2004 to 2014, 15, and the book came out in the early

“2017, but there's an important thing to know about how Christina approached the decades she”

researched John of God in his community. As an anthropologist, I do participate in observation,

you learn from them and you learn from your own body. This means Christina lived and meditated

with Joao's followers, which is to say she was very close to the movement, and was considered a part of it in many ways. Throughout her research, she had a central driving question. Why they were interested in this guy, and would go to great lengths and spend a lot of money to get there and try to get here by him. And also I wanted to know how this global movement expanded.

“To answer all of these questions, Christina says you have to understand what drew foreigners in.”

One was the unique mix of beliefs, John of God brought together, under his brand of spirituality. So John of God was born Catholic, but with popular Catholicism, a lot of praying, a lot of blessings, and all this. But he also was a high priest ofumbanda, which is Afro-Brazilian religion, and he also follows spiritism, which he also encounter around Brazil. This mix included new age concepts, making for an accessible and flexible set of beliefs

that left room for everyone to feel identified with some part of it. Buddhist concepts about past lives, karma, and reincarnation were also part of the belief system that was promoted at the Gasa. So the idea of charity is key here. It's through charity

“that you grow spiritually, it's through charity that you get healed. And the spirits will heal you”

because they also are doing acts of charity. So those spirits that are channeled by John of God, are coming back to improve their own karma, by healing people through mediums like him. This belief system offered international visitors to John of God, something they hadn't been able to find anywhere else. So in one word, I could say they get meaning. It makes meaning.

It makes sense. Finally, they're illness makes sense because there is an explanation,

religious explanation, or a philosophy of explanation for the healing. Eunice is perceived as karma resulting from past lives and actions. So you sort of like similar to the new age thinking, you chose this life and you chose this illness because you needed to learn something in this life. So Eunice is an opportunity for you to learn to grow spiritually. It is about transformation. To top it off, you get to tackle this transformation

with a whole community of people who are going through similar life experiences, which for Christina

“is perhaps the most essential ingredient to the magic of the gasa. There was a feeling of being on”

holidays like you have all the tropical juices and the tropical fruits and foods. You had a waterfall to go to the weekends. You traveled a bit, went into the countryside or just walked around. There was a lot of community and making friends from all over the world and seeing yourself in other people's stories. Why are you here? And the other person said, "Oh, I have cancer."

This first person said, "Be true. What are you taking? What kind of cancer? Are you

taking this medicine? What did your doctor tell you?" So there was a lot of engagement with each other. And they found peers, they found people who were suffering and then they going the same life crisis could be divorced, could be, you know, or even people were not sick and they were just seeking meaning in life. When you feel uncomfortable, what do you put on?

Biggie. You put on a biggie when you feel uncomfortable? So I want to get confident. This is DJ Hesterprin's music is therapy, a new podcast from me, a DJ and licensed therapist that asks one simple question, "Who do you want to be and what's the song that can take you there?" Music changes what you feel and what you feel changes what you do, right? That moment we're a song shift something inside you, that's where transformation starts. This year I'm talking

to experts across every area of life, like personal finance icon Jean Chatsy, New York Times Journalist David Gellis, relationship legend Dan Savage, human connection teacher Mark Brogues

I'll pair them with the right records and we'll teach you how to use the music to make change stick. This isn't just a podcast. It's unconventional therapy for your entire ear. Listen to DJ Hesterprin's music is therapy, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“Ever feel like you're being chased by the marriage police?”

Welcome to Boys & Girls, the podcast by dating isn't dating. A ranged marriage is basically a

reality show, except the contestants, our strangers and your entire family is judging. You're sipping coffee with one maybe, grabbing dinner with another, and praying your army can or Bobby appears before your shelf life runs out. Trust me, I've been through this ancient and unshakable tradition. I jumped in hoping to find love the right way, and instead I found chaos cringe and comedy, and now I'm looking for healing. Boys & Girls dives into every twist and

turn of the arranged marriage carousel, the meat awkward, the near misses, the heartbreak, and let's not forget all the jokes. Listen to Boys & Girls on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast,

“here's the thing I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers that compose”

Mark Shaman. Once you've established that you have the talent, it's about the hang. It's the

pleasure of hanging out with the people that you're with. Robin Eye was always a great hang. We

would sit in quibbits for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when I think of him, the time together laughing. Lawyer, Robbie Kaplan. The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. You can really make a difference to causes, and I say to if you bring the right case at the right time and age quality. Yeah, when there's the perfect example. And journalist Chris

Whipple, every White House staffer, they work in a bubble called the West Wing, and it's exponentially

“more so in the Trump White House. Listen to the new season of here's the thing on the iHeart”

Radio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. These elements, a blend of new age, spiritual beliefs, community, and a sense that they were connecting to a more authentic and spiritual place. We're all on display at the gasa, and they were all tied to the magnetism of John of God. But this wasn't by accident. It was by design. Even the visible surgeries, like the scissors up the nose, those were a spectacle meant to get the most skeptical of the visitors to believe in Joao and the

spirits. Christina says Joao talked about it openly with her. They are not necessary.

John of God a million times says a million times that they but people don't believe. So it's good

to see something absurd and extraordinary like this. People standing up and being operated on and not having infections because they would believe that the entities were there and the strategy worked. Despite there being many spiritual healers in Brazil, John of God was the one who broke through to become internationally famous. There are many healers in Brazil and they haven't become that famous. John of God doesn't speak any English. His Portuguese is rudimentary. So he has very little

schooling, although he's a very clever man, I would say. According to Christina, John of God made a few smart decisions that made all the difference. The first was in 1997 when he allowed an Australian follower of his to write an official biography about him in English, which was later translated into many languages. John of God also did select interviews with the press and filmed documentaries. All of these ultimately served his ways to spread the word about his work. He also enlisted the

help of international volunteers to become tour guides. He would tell people that their mission was to bring people from their home countries to the Kassa. But unlike typical volunteers, they were allowed to charge for this service as much as $2,000 per traveler. At least one tour guide I spoke with said guides made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, bringing people who would in turn become guides themselves. The number of visitors ballooned so much during the early 2000s that other

businesses boomed as well. Many of the local Pussata owners are rumored to have become millionaire during this time. In time there were so many tour guides and the number of guest houses increased

key to show us growth in popularity was his decision to take his healing sessions on the road. He

“held sold out international healing events in Australia. He went to Germany to the US. He went”

every year for many years to upstate New York, a place called Omega Center where all the new age healers or philosophies because you know, would come. The Omega Institute has hosted some of the most respected and popular spiritual speakers in the US such as Deepak Chopra, Pema Chodron and Dakar Tole. So it was tremendously validating for John of God to get to speak there, starting back in 2007.

You could see the impact of this back in Aberdeania. Between 2010 it was basically exploding.

There were like 5,000 people in the Cosa and the Cosa is a little place, right? And they said

“that there were no vacancies in the guest houses. So people had to stay 40 kilometers away in a”

not police. It was mayhem. It was crazy. So things were getting really out of hand with the number of people and they are dooring crowds. And then in 2012, Oprah visited Aberdeania to interview John of God. That's the, you know, really, when he's at the height of his popular fame, that kind of testimonial was very powerful for more people to come. But as Joelle's movement continued to expand, right under the surface, there were unsettling things

taking place. Things that the people closest to Joelle tried to ignore until they couldn't. Like Marcelo Stadudo, the medium who worked with Joelle that we met in episode 1, Marcelo remembers being uncomfortable with the way Joelle seemed to relish his popularity.

It has always been very pleased to be the greatest healer in the world.

You may be a healing medium, but a vanity is expressed there. For Marcelo, this sense of superiority, the desire to be around powerful politicians and celebrities, it all went against what he believed the work at the Cosa was all about. And what worried him most was that he could tell no one seemed to notice this. Some people observed this and took the necessary precaution. But most go out of desperation,

belief, fervor, and sometimes even by a certain fanaticism and don't analyze anything. As long as he cuts and no one feels pain, he's a god on earth and I'm only going to follow him. If he tells me not to breathe, I'm not going to breathe. If he tells me to throw myself

off the third floor, I'm going to throw myself. Then we have all the problems we had.

Very serious problems, a mysterious death, fraud, and sexual abuse. They didn't start in 2012. But Marcelo says by then, it was too late to fix what had long been going wrong. It's very sad and a pity to have to say and to have to recognize and to have to see the decadence of all this work. Of course, when we cried and prayed, we didn't know half of everything that happened. Of all the criminal acts that took place.

Next time, on Too Faced, John of God, I was very nervous. I told her what he had done to me, and she's laughed at me and told me to shut up. Yes, a lot of people knew. And when she'd get there, that person, he'd want to hold her hand,

“I began to get suspicious, you know, who is this guy, really?”

Listen to Too Faced, John of God, on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Too Faced, John of God is a production of exactly right media and adorned the media,

“hosted and written by myself Martina Castro. Our senior producer is Mariano Pashela,”

reporting and fact checking by Eloiset Rayano. Production assistance and research by Giovana Romano Sanchez, sound designed by Mauricio Mendoza, and our mastering engineer is Martín Cruz. Original music was composed by Mariana Romano. The artwork is by Vanessa Lailac.

Marcelo Stoduto was interpreted by Claudio Diaz, and Luciano Miranda by Andres Cabasero.

For exactly right media, the executive producers are Karen Colgarif, Georgia Hardstark,

“and Danielle Cramer, with consulting producer Lily Ladowig, and associate producer Jay Elias.”

If you're curious to know more about Cristina Rosa's research, her book is called "John of God," the globalization of Brazilian faith healing. Journalist Cristina Phoebe's book about

"John of God" is called "Joel de Dios" or "Busso de Fé." Special thanks to both of them,

for speaking with us for this series. Hello, it's me, Anna Sinfield, the host of The Girl Friends. I'm back with more one-off interviews with some truly kick-ass women on The Girl Friends Spotlight. I'm going to climb it. It's badness, hereditary. Let's see how we can stop healing. I'm not too intimidated by her. What are you talking about? Listen to The Girl Friends Spotlight, on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream, sometimes they even make you appreciate our

“architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor?”

That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films were crushed on from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Danielle Robay, host of Bookmarked, the podcast by Reese's Book Club. And this week, we are talking about a monster,

or maybe the woman who refused to be one. I'm sitting down with Maggie Gillen Hall to unpack her new film The Bride. And trust me, this isn't your grandmother's bride of Frankenstein. What I was more interested in was the monstrousness inside of each of us. You can spend your life running from those things, or you can turn around and shake hands with them. Listen to Bookmarked. The Reese's Book Club podcast on the I Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.