whose family members
were visiting him.
In 1991, Chico Xavier’s
mediumship was investigated by Dr Paulo Rossi.
His study confirmed that
93.3 per cent of the people who visited Xavier
had
not known him beforehand. Information from
the
letters
received
through Xavier contained
so many details about
the deceased and their
families as to
make fraud impossible.
Around 62.2 per cent of
the messages showed
more
than six relevant facts
each, and 71.1 per cent
had detailed information
about
the
deceased
people which was subsequently confirmed by
their families.
Dr Rossi concluded that
the information revealed
by Chico Xavier actually
came from the spirits of
dead people and was not
the result of any kind of
fraud.
In
2004,
Chico Xavier
Moreira de Almeida
gained his PhD degree
from the University of
São Paulo, Brazil, with
his research focus on
mediumship
experiences.
He studied 115 spiritist
mediums with the aim
of building their
sociodemographic profiles and checking their
mental health.
His study was based
solely on spiritist mediums who follow the doctrine founded by Allan
Alexander Kardec, because they
47
only use their mediumship free of charge to
help the spirits.
It is important to mention that Moreira de
Almeida and his team
chose these mediums
because the spiritism founded by Allan
Kardec is well
known worldwide for its
seriousness in studying the relationship
between the spirit world
and human nature.