A controversial Christian priest with self-proclaimed supernatural powers to heal other people was admitted to a hospital in Kerala’s Alappuzha on Monday for viral fever, reports Swarajya.

According to reports, one Christian priest named Father V P Joseph Valiyaveettil had to be admitted in a hospital after he complained of viral fever. Father Valiyaveettil runs a faith healing centre in Alappuzha named Kreupasanam Marian Retreat Centre. The healing centre is patronised by devotees from different part of the state who come to seek treatment for a number of diseases there.

According to the director of the centre Thankachan Panackal, Father Valiyaveettil possesses supernatural powers. Adding further the director said father was offering his service to the devotees without rest leading him to fall sick and his subsequent hospitalisation. The director claimed father was prescribed an antibiotic course as part of the treatment.

“He was providing his service without taking rest. Though we have asked him to take rest, he was not ready for that. By the grace of God and supernatural power with him, he can give relief to devotees,” was Panackal quoted as saying.

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Recently, Father Valiyaveetil courted controversy after his government-funded Christian centre was caught spreading superstition in Alappuzha district. The Kreupasanam Marian Retreat Centre and Socio-Cultural Centre run by Father Joseph circulated a religious propaganda newspaper in a government school in Pattanakkad village in Alappuzha.

The students of SCU government vocational higher secondary school were told to keep the Kreupasanam newspaper safely with them in order to get higher marks in the exams. The students were asked to keep the paper within their books and under their pillow before going to sleep, so as to fair well in the exams.

In another shocking case of such an experiment with the so-called ‘miraculous’ Kreupasanam paper, a 27-year-old girl had to be admitted in hospital after she fell extremely sick with complaints of itching and vomiting. When the doctors determined that it was a case of food poisoning, the mother of the girl revealed that she had torn the ‘holy paper’ into pieces, mixed it with dosa batter and served those dosas to her daughter so that her daughter could get married as soon as possible. When the daughter had complained of change in taste in her food, the mother had lied that it was due to change from coconut oil to sunflower oil.