Becoming a global village : the impact of the John of God Pilgrimage in Abadiânia

I first visited Abadiania, a little town in central Brazil home to a Brazilian faith healer, in 2004. In my first morning in town, I walked the short distance from my pousada (guesthouse) to Casa de Dom Imicio (House of St Ignatius), the healing centre headed by the faith healer Joao de Deus (John of God). While I was walking and enjoying the soft early morning sun, I glanced over my shoulder and was startled by the sight of a crowd of people dressed all in white (as recommended by the healing centre) pouring from other pousadas and walking the same dirt road toward the Casa. As they passed by, I could hear languages from all over the world: German, French, English, Russian, but I heard no Portuguese. On our way to the Casa, we passed by an Internet cafe advertising broadband connection, a juice bar (with the latest detox juices, organic dishes and a menu written in English and a shop for crystals, Spiritist books and candles. I was later to find out that many of these businesses were owned by foreigners who had arrived as patients or healers and ended up staying. We also walked past little Brazilian children too poor to wear anything but a pair of old shorts, stray dogs, carts and horses, and unpainted cement block houses. The contrast was shocking: on the one hand we were in a poor village in central Brazil; on the other hand there was a mix of New Age chatter, organic food, and high technology typical of cosmopolitan cities. It was as if two very different worlds had collided