A phenomenon in Brazil has children as young as 11 preaching in Pentecostal churches as they attempt to heal sick and needy people of their ailments.
A New York Times Magazine piece details the practice, and leads with the story of an 11-year-old girl who tries to perform miracles in her family's International Mission of Miracles in a city 10 miles from Rio de Janeiro.
Alani Santos spends Monday nights at the church, placing her hands on congregants in need of a miracle. One person in the Times story was trying to get rid of AIDS, while another had chronic anxiety.
Santos, who has been preaching since she was 3, also records a radio show every Saturday.
Santos' father said she performed her first miracle when she was just 51 days old. He placed her hands on a woman suffering from a distended stomach, and the woman immediately fell, her belly instantly deflating.
Further examples in the Times piece detail other children who preach in Pentecostal churches. One pastor estimated there to be thousands of child teachers living and preaching in Brazil, most coming from poor families.
Since the 1970s, reports the Times, the number of Christians practicing in either Pentecostalism or other religions that emphasize miracles as healing has increased from 10 percent to as much as 25 percent. The shift has mainly occurred among lower-income families.
The child preachers in Brazil have, in some cases, gained international followings thanks to the Internet and the advent of social media. Critics say the children are being exploited and the phenomenon is not so much about practicing religion as it is about making money.
The story of Brazil's child preachers is not new: there have been several stories about them in recent years.
National Geographic, for example, put together a story about child preachers around the world.
An ABC News piece last year detailed the practice further, and claimed the movement of performing miracles to heal the sick and needy encompasses 44 million people. And the practice has become a profitable business.
"The number of churches [is] rising more than the number of the members," professor Eduardo Refkalefsky told ABC.
A 2012 BBC story, meanwhile, discussed child preachers in the United States — some as young as 11.
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