Chico Xavier

Xavier was born in Pedro Leopoldo in the state of Minas Gerais, on 2 April 1910, to João Cândido Xavier, a lottery ticket vendor, and Maria João de Deus, a Catholic housewife.^[11] By 1924, he had completed his primary education but did not pursue further schooling. He began a career as a sales clerk.

In May 1927, his sister, Maria Xavier, was having mental disturbances, which many believed were caused by spiritual sources known as obsession. Xavier was inspired to help his sister with mediumship capacities and led him to Spiritism Doctrine. Later, Xavier would claim that several deceased poets had begun to manifest themselves through him, but they only started to identify themselves in 1931.

In 1928, Xavier published his first psychographic messages in the newspapers O Jornal in Rio de Janeiro, and Almanaque de Notícias, from Portugal.^{[citation needed]} He became widely known in Brazil in 1931, when he published the book Parnassus Beyond the Tomb (pt:Parnaso de Além-Túmulo), which contained 259 poems allegedly composed by 56 deceased Brazilian and Portuguese poets.^{[citation needed]} In the same year, he met his spiritual mentor Emmanuel for the first time, who Xavier said gave him his mission to psychograph a sequence of 30 books, and to remain loyal to Jesus and spiritualist Allan Kardec. Later, Xavier claimed that Emmanuel had previously been variously incarnated as the Roman senator Publius Lentulus, as a slave who sympathized with Christianity, and as Jesuit priest Manuel da Nóbrega.^{[citation needed]}

In 1932, the book Parnaso de Além-Túmulo was published by the Brazilian Spiritualist Federation, a compilation of poetry claimed to be dictated by spirits of Brazilian and Portuguese poets.^{[citation needed]}

In 1943, Xavier's novel Nosso Lar was published, which became a best seller and one of the author's most widely-read works. A movie of the same name was released in 2010.

In 1944, journalist David Nasser and photographer Jean Manzon went to Pedro Leopoldo to write a report on Xavier for the Rio de Janeiro-based magazine O Cruzeiro,^[12] that Xavier's followers deem to have shown him in an unflattering light. At first, they tried to reach Xavier at the Fazenda Modelo, the State-run farm where he was employed as a typist for most of his life, but the farm's director denied them access, saying that Xavier was tired and needed rest. According to the report, they met with Xavier, never telling him for whom they were working, as he returned from the farm accompanied by a gentleman from Rio who would come to spend weeks at a time with Xavier. The man described Xavier as "[...] a cultured lad. He discusses many subjects, reads a little English and French." and as "a voracious reader" who would have gone through a copy of Man, the Unknown given to him in under five hours. Photos in the story show Xavier's home library with piles of books, with him reading and taking notes.^[12]

Xavier's followers claim that Nasser and Manzon gave fake names in order to test Xavier's powers. In an interview in 1980, Nasser said that one night, "Manzon called me and said, 'Have you seen the book that Chico Xavier gave to us?'. I said no. 'Well, take a look,' he said. I was in my library, I picked up the book and written there was this: 'To my brother David Nasser, from Emmanuel'. He had made a similar dedication to Manzon. It is things like that make me very afraid to get involved in Spiritism issues."^[13]

At that time, Chico Xavier met the young student of Medicine and medium Waldo Vieira; together they psychographed several books, until their abruption some years later. In 1959, Francisco moved to Uberaba, where he lived until the end of his days. He continued psychographing several books, approaching topics that were priorities in the 60's; such as sex, drugs, youth issues, technology, space travels, among others. Uberaba then became an informal centre of pilgrimage, with thousands of people arriving every day, people hoping to make contact with deceased relatives. At that time, books of "messages" became popular; letters dictated by spirits of regular people to their family members, proceeding as well with constant campaigns of food and clothing distribution to the poor people around the town.

On 22 May 1965, Chico Xavier and Waldo Vieira travelled to the US in order to disclose spiritism abroad; with the help of Salim Salomão Haddad, president of Christian Spirit Center, and his wife Phillis, they studied English and launched the book titled The World of The Spirits (Ideal Espírita; Portuguese version).

At the beginning of 1970, Chico took part in the popular nationwide interview TV program called "Pinga-Fogo" (Dripping Fire), which reached extremely high levels of audience throughout the country.

In his first appearance on the program Pinga-Fogo,^[14] journalist and philosopher João de Scantimburgo focused on the authenticity of Xavier's psychographic writing. João de Scantimburgo expressed skepticism about Xavier's prolific output and his ability to convincingly mimic the styles of diverse authors like Humberto de Campos and Guerra Junqueiro. He suggested that Xavier's subconscious, rather than spirits, might be responsible for these literary feats. Xavier, demonstrating his characteristic humility and politeness, countered this by maintaining that he serves merely as a channel for spirit authors, emphasising that they dictate the content while he transcribes it. He acknowledged potential unconscious influences but credited his spirit guide, Emmanuel, for stylistic guidance and refinement. The conversation also touched upon the possibility of historical Catholic saints, such as St. Bridget of Sweden and St. Clare of Montefalco, possessing mediumistic abilities.

Chico Xavier spent his last years at the Hélio Angiotti Hospital in Uberaba. On 30 June 2001, exactly one year before he died, a mysterious light was captured by a TV Ideal reporter, which reached Chico Xavier's room. The case was revisited upon his death and subsequent anniversaries.^[15]

Chico Xavier died from cardiorespiratory arrest on 30 June 2002, aged 92. According to his friends and family, Xavier had expressed a wish to God to die on a day when the people of Brazil were immersed in happiness and national celebration, believing that this would lessen the sadness of his departure.^[4][16] His eventual death coincided with Brazil's victory in the 2002 FIFA World Cup, approximately nine hours after the final match was concluded.

In 2010, Kentaro Mori published an article in the Skeptical Inquirer which accused Xavier of fraud. According to Mori, Xavier's close associate Waldo Vieira stated that the staff at Xavier's Spiritist Center in Brazil would help him by gathering information about his clients and faking psychic letters. He was also accused of using perfume in the séance room, which was a common Spiritualist trick to pretend the scent was of supernatural origin. Xavier was associated with the spiritist medium Otília Diogo, who fraudulently pretended to be a spirit by covering herself in white sheets, with a photo of Xavier and a sheeted Diogo being taken in 1964.^[9] The skeptic Karen Stollznow has also accused Xavier of hot reading.^[10]

Chico Xavier wrote most of 450 allegedly psychographic books. He never admitted to being the author of any of his books. He affirmed he would only reproduce whatever the spirits dictated to him. This is the reason why he would never accept the money attained from selling his books. He sold more than 50 million copies in Portuguese; with translations in English, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Russian, Romanian, Mandarin, Swedish, Braille, and other languages. He also transcribed around ten thousand letters allegedly from the dead to their families. The letters were declared legitimate by many people, and some of the letters were used as evidence in four criminal trials.^[17][18] Chico Xavier granted all the copyrights to a charity institution since the first book.

His works are published by the Centro Espírita União, by the Casa Editora O Clarim, by Edicel, by the Federação Espírita Brasileira, by the Federação Espírita do Estado de São Paulo, by the Federação Espírita do Rio Grande do Sul, by the Fundação Marieta Gaio, by the Grupo Espírita Emmanuel s/c Editora, by the Comunhão Espírita Cristã, by the Instituto de Difusão Espírita, by the Instituto de Divulgação Espírita André Luiz, by the Livraria Allan Kardec Editora, by the Editora Pensamento, by the Editora Vinha de Luz and by the União Espírita Mineira. Even though he hadn't finished primary high school, he would write around six books a year, among romances, tales, philosophy, rehearsals, apologues, chronics, poems, etc. He is the most read author from Latin America (note: year of 2010).

His first books, Parnaso de Além-Túmulo, containing 256 poems attributed to deceased poets, among them, two being the Portuguese João de Deus, Antero de Quental and Guerra Junqueiro and the Brazilians Olavo Bilac, Cruz e Sousa and Augusto dos Anjos, was published for the first time in 1932; the book caused strong admiration and controversy among the literary circle from that time. Among other books, Nosso Lar was the one with the largest circulation, it was first published in 1944, which sold more than two million copies, attributed to the spirit of André Luiz, it was the first volume out of a collection composed by seventeen books, all of them psychographed by Chico Xavier, some of them in partnership with medium Doctor Waldo Vieira.

Through the decades, Chico produced thousands of psychographed letters for desperate parents and mothers who came to him in order to receive messages from their deceased sons and daughters. According to a survey from 1990, performed by the Spiritist Medical Association of São Paulo, the letters always contained much information that was somehow familiar to the readers for whom the letters were intended, and 35 per cent of them carried an identical signature to the signature of the deceased.^[19] By the end of 1990, Xavier had psychographed more than 400 books. At that time, it was estimated that approximately 50 million spiritist books were circulating in Brazil, of which 15 million were attributed to Chico Xavier and 12 million to Kardec.^[20]

One electroencephalogram study conducted during a mediumnistic trance by Dr. Elias Barbosa, Chico Xavier's family doctor, was reported by "Revista Planeta", a popular news magazine, in June 1973. It was suggested that Chico presented common characteristics of epilepsy, even though he was never epileptic, with claims that his brain activity was somehow "paranormal". Many years later, in February 2010, Dr. Guilherme Gustavo Riccioppo Rodrigues reviewed Barbosa's EEG study and found "no evidence to suggest clinical abnormality, let alone to support the idea that his brain is paranormal".^[21]

A 2014 study published by parapsychologists in the journal Explore investigated the accuracy of information contained in 13 letters allegedly written by Chico Xavier through psychography (automatic writing) between 1974 and 1979, and claimed that Xavier made 99 accurate claims that he could not have made without supernatural means.^[22] The paper was criticized by skeptics and citizen science journalists. Carlos Orsi [Wikidata], in Galileu magazine and Maurício Tuffani, in the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, who questioned the credibility of results and suggested that the support for Xavier's authenticity as the result of methodological flaws. They also criticized the article because of the low impact factor of the Explore journal. Tuffani published a subsequent response from the parapsychologist Alexander Moreira-Almeida [Wikidata], one of the authors of the article, but did not retract their criticisms.^{[23][24][25][26]}

In 1981, appointed for the Nobel Peace Prize, when his name gathered 2 million signatures for submission. However, the Nobel Peace Prize 1981 was awarded to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 1999, the Government of the State of Minas Gerais established the "Commendation of Peace Chico Xavier", an award which is annually awarded to individuals or legal entities who work for peace and social well-being.^[27]

In 2000, Chico was elected the "Mineiro" from the 20th century,^[6] ("Mineiro" is the name given to people born in the state of Minas Gerais; Brazil) followed by Alberto Santos-Dumont (founder of the aviation in Brazil) and Juscelino Kubitschek (President of Brazil 1956 – 1961 and founder of Brasilia); in a contest performed by Rede Globo Minas, (Rede Globo Minas; TV station from the state of Minas Gerais) with 704.030 votes.

After Chico Xavier died, the house where he lived between 1948 and 1959 and the house he lived in between 1959 and 2002 were transformed into non-profit museums in reference to his life and work; and the interior of Pedro Leopoldo's Modelo Farm, where he worked as a typist between 1930 and the late 1950s, was also transformed into a memorial in his honor.^[28][29]

In 2006, he was elected the "History's greatest Brazilian", in a contest performed by Época magazine.^[6]

In 2009, the Brazilian Government gave the name "Chico Xavier" for a passage of an important highway of the country, BR-050.^[27][30]

In 2010, his centenary was marked by numerous celebrations in Brazil, including a special postage stamp.^[31] In April 2010, the film Chico Xavier was released, based on the biography As Vidas de Chico Xavier ("The lives of Chico Xavier") by journalist Marcel Souto Maior, and directed and produced by Daniel Filho. Xavier was portrayed by actors Matheus Costa, Ângelo Antônio and Nelson Xavier, respectively, during three phases of his life: from 1918 to 1922, 1931 to 1959 and 1969 to 1975.

In 2012, on the TV show O Maior Brasileiro de Todos os Tempos ("The greatest Brazilian of all time"), broadcast by SBT, Xavier was voted as one of the 12 greatest Brazilian citizens of all times. In the first knockout stage on 2 August 2012, he won 50.5% of the vote in a head-to-head with Dulce de Souza Lopes Pontes. In the semi-final, he beat Ayrton Senna, receiving 63.8% of the vote. In the final, Xavier competed against Alberto Santos-Dumont and Princess Isabel, and won the vote with 71.4% to be named "the greatest Brazilian of all time".

In 2013, Xavier's hometown of Uberaba began the construction of a memorial in his honor.^[32] The Chico Xavier Memorial was inaugurated in 2016, built in collaboration between the Chico Xavier Institute and the city hall.^[33]

On 29 October 2020, a life-size bronze statue of Xavier was unveiled at Praça Rui Barbosa in Uberaba. It was made by visual artist Vânia Braga.^[34]

Through the Federal Law No. 14.201 of 2021, Francisco Candido Xavier had his name inscribed in Livro dos Heróis e Heroínas da Pátria (the Book of Heroes and Heroines of the Fatherland), a document that preserves the names of figures who marked the history of Brazil and is found in the Tancredo Neves Pantheon of the Fatherland and Freedom, in Brasilia.^[35][36]

• Eurípedes Barsanulfo
• Divaldo Pereira Franco