ABADIANIA, Brazil: Every week using mainly his hands but also armed with scissors, a knife and scalpel, Joao Teixeira de Faria, a self-styled Brazilian medium and "psychic surgeon," treats thousands of sick people.
Among the thousands who claim to have been cured by the healer known as "John of God" is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the popular Brazilian ex-president, now said to be in remission from larynx cancer.
"I am going to cure you," de Faria told one young woman during a session in the small town of Abadiania in the central state of Goias. After going into a trance, he stuck a four-centimeter (nearly two-inch) needle into the sole of her feet.
"Don't look, it's going to hurt," he warned her as he thrust the needle in several times.
The young woman apparently felt nothing and when it was over, the nearly illiterate faith healer flashed a big smile.
His patient, visibly moved, extolled that she had just been cured from a chronic illness which doctors could not treat.
Born on June 24, 1942, de Faria is an adept of spiritism, a religious doctrine based on the belief in the survival of a spirit after death.
Founded in the 19th century by Frenchman Allan Kardec, spiritism today is particularly popular in Brazil, where it has nearly three million followers.
The healer's entourage said de Faria paid several visits to the former president when he was being treated at a Sao Paulo hospital for a larynx cancer.
Lula however has refused to confirm or deny press reports that he met at least three times in Sao Paulo with the healer.
American TV show hostess Oprah has also visited the town to film the crowds who gather around the healer.
"John of God" says he communicates with spirits when he goes into a trance. He diagnoses diseases, prescribes medication and conducts surgeries, either with his hands, or with kitchen knives, scalpels or scissors.
"Since the age of eight, God has given me this energy. I don't heal. God heals," the spiritual healer told AFP during a brief respite.
He receives about 1,000 people a day, three times a week and more than half of them are foreigners.
The ritual is always the same: the faith healer sits in a big armchair, his feet on a cushion. In front of him and in adjacent rooms, several hundred followers and so-called mediums meditate to form an energy circle.
One by one, the patients then parade before de Faria who treats them, gives them instructions or calls them to come back for a surgery or treatment, often in less than a minute.
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