John of God: The Brazilian Healer Who's Touched the Lives of Millions

Sometime in 1951 João Teixeira de Faria, age nine, rightly predicted which houses in his aunt's neighborhood would be damaged or destroyed by an impending windstorm. Since then, his abilities have expanded to include the channeling of a number of Entities, or spirits. Two of his followers (from the Casa de Dom Inácio de Loyola, where he makes his home and performs his healings), Cumming and Leffler, began gathering testimonials and "spirit photographs," pictures that they believe capture the essence of the spirits. The result is a combination history–prayer guide–visitors' primer on medium João and his work in South America and throughout the world. The team-writing approach makes for repetition (though this may also be due to the epithetic nature of the story) and, at times, contradiction. Testimonies come from a wide variety of sources—farmers, doctors, lawyers and even Peruvian officials—and include an equally broad spectrum of experience, from herbal prescriptions to invisible surgeries, crystal bed treatments to physical surgeries. All this purportedly comes from a man who, in his earthly corporeal incarnation, can neither read nor write. Skeptics will not likely be persuaded by this testimony to the Brazilian healer. (May)