Saint 

“Angels and werewolves” 

typically refers to concepts in fantasy, mythology, and fiction, exploring the relationship between celestial beings and lycanthropes, often as a central conflict or romance. The idea is explored in fanfiction, novels, and academic works that analyze animal-human hybrids in art and myth, and can also be seen in tabletop and social media games where “angels” and “werewolves” have specific roles. 

In fantasy and fiction

• Conflict and romance: Many stories feature a forbidden love or a central conflict between angels and werewolves, which can represent different worldviews or origins.
• Hybrids: Some narratives introduce a hybrid species that combines features from both angels and werewolves, though this is more common in fanfiction.
• Shared settings: Both creatures are common in modern fantasy literature and television, sometimes appearing in the same world alongside other supernatural beings like vampires. 

In academic and mythological contexts

• Therianthropes: The concept of the werewolf falls under the broader category of therianthropes, or animal-human hybrids.
• Art and myth: The book From Angels to Werewolves by Philip F. Palmedo examines how humans throughout history have depicted a wide variety of hybrids in art, religion, and myth, including winged beings and animal-headed people. 

In games

• Role-playing and social games: In games like Werewolf (also known as Mafia), the “Angel” is a role that protects other players, often from the “werewolves”. 

Military life

“John of God” can refer to two very different people: 

a Catholic saint who was a former mercenary, and a modern-day, disgraced Brazilian faith healer who has been convicted of sexual assault. 

Saint John of God (1495–1550) 

Born João Duarte Cidade in Portugal, he led a wild and dissolute life for many years as a shepherd, soldier, and mercenary in Europe and North Africa. Around the age of 40, a powerful religious conversion experience after hearing a sermon by St. John of Avila led him to a life of dedication to God and service to the poor and sick in Granada, Spain. 

• Conversion and Works Initially his intense remorse led people to think he was insane, and he was committed to a mental hospital. After being calmed by John of Avila, he dedicated his life to practical charity, renting a house to care for the poor, homeless, and infirm.
• Legacy His work led to the founding of the Order of Hospitallers of Saint John of God (also known as the Brothers Hospitallers), a worldwide Catholic religious order that still operates hospitals and care centers today. He is the patron saint of hospitals, the sick, nurses, and firefighters (due to his heroic actions during a hospital fire). 

João Teixeira de Faria (born 1942) 

This “John of God” is a modern-day Brazilian self-proclaimed spiritual healer who gained international fame, even being featured on Netflix in a documentary titled John of God: The Crimes of a Spiritual Healer. 

• Crimes and Convictions In late 2018, hundreds of women accused Teixeira of sexual abuse and rape during private “healing” sessions. He denied the allegations but was subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted of multiple counts of rape and sexual violation, receiving a cumulative sentence of hundreds of years in prison.
• Status Due to age and health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was placed under house arrest, where he remains. 

The farmer was so pleased with Cidade’s strength and diligence that he wanted him to marry his daughter and to become his heir. When he was about 22 years of age, to escape his master’s well-meant but persistent offer of his daughter’s hand in marriage, the young man joined a company of foot-soldiers, and in that company he fought for Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, eventually dispatched by the Count of Oropesa, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Zúñiga, against French forces at Fontarabia. While serving there, he was appointed to guard an enormous amount of loot, much of which had been rifled by the time he was relieved. Suspicion naturally fell on Cidade; even if he had not been involved in the theft, at the least he was guilty of dereliction of duty. He was condemned to death, and that would have been his fate had not some more tolerant officer intervened to win his pardon.^[2]

Disillusioned by this turn of events after what he felt was faithful military service, Cidade returned to the farm in Oropesa. He then spent four years again following a pastoral life. This went on until the day that the Count and his troops marched by, on their way to fight in Hungary against the Turks. Still unmarried, he immediately decided to enlist with them and left Oropesa for a final time. For the next 18 years he served as a trooper in various parts of Europe.^[2]

When the Count and his troops had helped in the rout of the Turks, they set sail to return to Spain, landing in A Coruña in Galicia. Then Cidade found himself so close to his homeland, he decided to return to his hometown and to see what he could learn of the family he had lost so many years before. By that time, he had forgotten his parents’ names but retained enough information from his childhood that he was able to track down an uncle he had still living in the town. He learned their fate from this uncle and, realizing that he no longer had real ties to the region, returned to Spain.^[1]

Africa

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Cidade arrived near Seville, where he soon found work herding sheep, which was familiar to him. With the time now available to him to ponder his life, he began to realize that this occupation no longer satisfied him, and he felt a desire to see Africa and possibly give his life as a martyr through working to free Christians enslaved there. He set out for the Portuguese territory of Ceuta (located on the northern coast of Africa). On the way, he befriended a Portuguese knight also traveling there with his wife and daughters, who was being exiled to that region by the King of Portugal for some crime he had committed.^[1]

When they arrived in the colony, the knight found that the few possessions the family had been able to take with them had been stolen, leaving them penniless. Additionally the entire family had become ill. Having no other recourse, the knight appealed to Cidade for his help. He promised to care for the family and began to nurse them and found work to provide them with food, despite the poor treatment poor citizens received at the hands of the colony’s rulers.^[1]

The desertion of one of Cidade’s coworkers to a nearby Muslim city in order to escape this treatment (which meant his conversion to that faith) led to a growing feeling of despair in him. Troubled and feeling spiritually lost from his failure to practice his faith during his years of military service, he went to the Franciscan friary in the colony. There he was advised that his desire to be in Africa was not working to his spiritual growth and that he should consider returning to Spain. He decided to do this.^[1]Landing in Gibraltar, he began to wander around the region of Andalusia, trying to find what God might want from him.^[3]

It was during this period of his life that Cidade is said to have had a vision of the Infant Jesus, who bestowed on him the name by which he was later known, John of God, also directing him to go to Granada.^[4] Cidade then settled in that city, where he worked disseminating books, using the recently invented moveable type printing press to provide people with works of chivalry and devotional literature.^[3]

John of God (1495–1550) was a Portuguese soldier turned healthcare worker in Spain who founded the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, a Catholic religious order dedicated to caring for the poor, sick, and those with mental illnesses. He is the patron saint of hospitals, the sick, nurses, the dying, heart patients, booksellers, and firefighters. 

Life Story

Born João Duarte Cidade in Portugal, he had a restless early life. He was separated from his family at age eight, worked as a shepherd, and later became a soldier in the army of Charles V, leading a “wild and dissolute life”. 

At around 40 years old, after hearing a sermon by Saint John of Avila, he experienced a profound religious conversion. Overwhelmed with remorse for his past sins, he publicly beat himself and was subsequently committed to the Royal Hospital for the mentally ill, where he endured the harsh treatments of the time, including flogging and chaining. 

After his release, and upon the advice of John of Avila to serve others rather than enduring personal hardships, he dedicated his life to an active service of charity. 

Founding the Order

John rented a house in Granada and began caring for the sick and homeless, initially doing all the work himself, including begging for alms at night and nursing by day. His boundless charity and humility attracted followers, who became known as the Brothers Hospitallers (also known as the “Brothers of Mercy” or in Italian, Fatebenefratelli, meaning “Do-Good Brothers”). The order was officially approved by the Holy See years after his death and now operates hundreds of hospitals and services globally. 

John of God, O.H. (Portuguese: João de Deus; Spanish: Juan de Dios; born João Duarte Cidade[ˈʒwɐ̃w̃ duˈwaɾ.t siˈða.ðɨ]; March 8, 1495 – March 8, 1550) was a Portuguese soldier turned healthcare worker in Spain, whose followers later formed the Brothers Hospitallers of Saint John of God, a Catholic religious institute dedicated to the care of the poor, sick and those with mental disorders.

The first biography of John of God was written by Francisco de Castro, the chaplain at St. John of God’s hospital in Granada, Spain. He drew from his personal knowledge of John as a young man and also used material gathered from eyewitnesses and contemporaries of his subject. It was published at the express wish of the Archbishop of Granada who gave financial backing to its publication. Castro began writing in 1579, 29 years after John of God’s death, but he did not live to see it published, for he died soon after completing the work. His mother, Catalina de Castro, had the book published in 1585.

Shortly after the publication of Castro’s Historia, an Italian translation was published at Rome by an Oratorian priest, Giovanni Bordini, in 1587. Despite several mistranslations and his own extraneous comments, this work became the source of most translations into other languages.

John of God was born João Duarte Cidade in Montemor-o-Novo, now in the District of Évora, Kingdom of Portugal, the son of André Cidade and Teresa Duarte, a once-prominent family that was impoverished but had great religious faith. One day, when John was eight years of age, he disappeared. Whether he had been deliberately kidnapped, or whether he had been seduced from his home by a cleric who had been given hospitality in the home, is not clear. According to his original biography, his mother died from grief soon after this, and his father joined the Franciscan Order.^[1]

The young Cidade soon found himself a homeless orphan in the streets of Oropesa, near Toledo, Spain. There, in a foreign land, he had no one to care for him, nothing on which to live, and he had to be content with whatever food he could find. He was eventually taken in by a man called Francisco Mayoral and the boy settled down as a shepherd caring for his sheep in the countryside.

Cidade experienced a major religious conversion on Saint Sebastian‘s Day (January 20) of 1537, while listening to a sermon by John of Ávila, a leading preacher of the day who was later to become his spiritual director and would encourage him in his quest to improve the life of the poor. At age 42, he had what was perceived at the time as an acute mental breakdown. Moved by the sermon, he engaged in a public beating of himself, begging mercy and wildly repenting for his past life. He was incarcerated in the area of the Royal Hospital reserved for the mentally ill and received the treatment of the day, which was to be segregated, chained, flogged, and starved.^[5] Cidade was visited by John of Avila, who advised him to be more actively involved in tending to the needs of others rather than in enduring personal hardships. John gained peace of heart and shortly after left the hospital to begin work among the poor.^[6]

Around this time, he made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura, where it is said he experienced a vision of Mary, who encouraged him to work with the poor.^[7] Cidade expended all his energy in caring for the neediest people upon his return to the city of Granada. He established a house where he wisely tended to the needs of the sick poor, at first doing his own begging.^[6] When John began to put into effect his dream, because of the stigma attached to mental illness he found himself misunderstood and rejected.^[5] For some time he was alone in his charitable work, soliciting by night the needed medical supplies and by day attending to the needs of his patients and the hospital; but he soon received the cooperation of charitable priests and physicians. Many stories are related of the heavenly guests who visited him during the early days of his immense tasks, which were lightened at times by the archangel Raphael in person. To put a stop to his custom of exchanging his cloak with any beggar he chanced to meet, Sebastian Ramirez, Bishop of Tui, had a religious habit made for him, which was later adopted in all its essentials as the religious garb of his followers, and the bishop imposed on him for all time the name given him by the Infant Jesus, John of God.^[4]