Case file · High strangeness
João de Deus, Abadiânia
From the 1970s the medium João Teixeira de Faria, 'John of God', drew millions of visitors to his Casa de Dom Inácio in Abadiânia, Goiás, for 'spirit surgery'. In 2018 hundreds of women accused him of sexual abuse.
1976 CE · -16.11, -48.71 · status: claim
The account
Celebrities and foreign tour groups made Abadiânia a global pilgrimage town. He was arrested in December 2018 and has since been convicted of rape and other crimes, with sentences totalling well over 100 years.
The sceptical view
His 'surgeries' were often scraping of the eye with a knife or small skin cuts, and there is no evidence that they cured disease. Some visitors abandoned medical treatment.