This Brazilian Faith Healer Is a Monster - The John of God story

episode

Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast 10 min 1 speaker 5 chapters transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

jump: chapters · speakers · find in transcript

Transcript

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Who is John of God and what is his claim to fame?

Narrator 0:00

So this woman, she's losing her eyesight and she'll do anything to get it back. So one day she hears about this famous spiritual faith healer in Brazil and she thinks maybe he can heal her eyes. So she travels to Brazil with some friends and they get there and she meets this faith healer and she has a session with him and he has her sit down in a chair and he tilts her head back and then he pulls out a scalpel and he starts cutting right into her eye. Now the woman, let's call her mother-in-law because she's my actual mother-in-law. But we'll get to her in a second. First, let's talk about the faith healer. So the faith healer, his name's John of God. And this dude claims that his God or whoever will heal people through him if he like does his hocus pocus and touches them. Of course, he has no formal training in medicine. He's never been to med school. In fact, he dropped out of elementary school in the second grade.

Narrator 0:51

But regardless, he considers himself a healer. And one day, he just decides to travel around Brazil and tell people, hey, look, I can heal you. And people fall for it. In fact, they're really into it. And over time, he slowly builds a following. And his following becomes so big that he eventually builds a spiritual healing center in the middle of this small town to accommodate all of his visitors.

What are psychic surgeries and how does John of God perform them?

Narrator 1:14

And there, John of God becomes known for performing what he calls psychic surgeries. Which is exactly what it sounds like. He uses no anesthesia, no sterilization, and he does these medical techniques on people that just don't make any damn sense. Like he shoves surgical forceps up people's noses to heal them. Or he'll scrape the white of someone's eyeball with a scalpel in order to heal them. It's weird. Like someone will come in with back pain and he'll be like, let's scrape your eye with a scalpel. That'll heal you. But anyway, he claims this works. He claims that he's cured people's cancer. He claims that he's healed multiple sclerosis. He claims that he's helped people walk who couldn't previously walk.

Narrator 1:55

And while he's doing all this, he allegedly doesn't take any payment for all these healings. But he does, of course, accept donations. And he sells things to his followers, like special healing pills that are just placebo. And he also sells, and I'm not making this up, bottled holy water. And so by doing all this, John is starting to get really popular in Brazil. In fact, he gets so popular that ABC notices and they do a one-hour special on him. And they treat him not as if he's a con man, which he is, but they treat him as if he's actually healing people. And specifically on this special, they interview a woman named Lisa Melman. And Lisa Melman, on this show, she gets on camera and she loudly declares that she has breast cancer.

How did John of God gain international attention?

Narrator 2:39

but that she's going to quit all her chemo and all her traditional cancer treatment. And instead, she is only going to let John of God treat her. I don't know. I guess he's going to stick forceps up her nose and that's going to cure her breast cancer. Oh, but it gets worse. A few years later, after the ABC special, someone very influential learns about John of God. Oprah. And Oprah decides she's going to investigate and she's going to see herself if any of this is real. So she travels to Brazil and she spends a bunch of time with him and she dedicates several episodes of her very popular TV show to praising him and his work and all these people he's allegedly healed.

What was the impact of media endorsements on John of God's career?

Narrator 3:17

She even has Lisa Melman come on one of those episodes and miraculously Lisa claims that her breast cancer is now gone. She says her sessions with John of God cured her. And Oprah and her audience, they applaud this. But then two years later, sadly, Lisa Melman dies. It turns out her breast cancer hadn't actually been cured. She just thought it had because that's what John of God told her. In fact, when she stopped her treatment, her cancer got progressively worse. And she was apparently in a lot of pain when she died. Of course, Oprah never gets on TV and mentions that part. Regardless, the damage has already been done. Oprah has endorsed John of God on her show twice and exposed him to an international audience. And from there, his business just explodes.