After his death his devotees conflated his identity with two other monks named João Maria who wandered, preached and cured in the region.

[2] One legend about João Maria de Jesus is that he abandoned the Christian religion to marry a pagan, and fought the French expeditionary army.

After his wife's death he was made a prisoner, managed to escape, and had a vision of the apostle Paul who sent him on a pilgrimage for 14 (or perhaps 40) years as penance.

[4] He said he had a dream that he would walk the world for fourteen years without eating meat on Wednesdays, Fridays or Saturdays, and without staying in anyone's house.

[1] He assumed the first monk's names and sanctity as a means to gain credibility among the people, but never claimed that he was a reincarnation of the first João Maria.

[7] The doctor and federalist colonel Angelo Dourado met João Maria, who claimed to have foreseen the present war, and said the republicans were animated by the devil, and had strength and money, but the others would win even without arms.

It was said he could cure a person simply by praying for their health and prescribing a tea from a common herb called "monk's broom".

[2] He may have died in 1908 in hospital in Ponta Grossa, Paraná, or may be buried in Lagoa Vermelha, Rio Grande do Sul.

[7] One legend tells that when João Maria de Jesus was passing through Ponta Grossa early in the 1900s some children playing in the street threw stones at him.

[1] There is a large literature about the monks called João Maria, but the devout population have little interest in their historicity and are much more concerned with the sacred characteristics attributed to them.

In the 1970s and 1980s the images were widely distributed among the local Kaingang and Xokleng people by leaders of the Indian Missionary Council.