Origins and foundation The roots of the national federative organization date back to the publication, in
Rio de Janeiro, then the capital of the Empire, on January 21, 1883, of the periodical "
Reformador", initiated and financed by
Augusto Elias da Silva, a Portuguese photographer who settled in Brazil, with intellectual direction by Major
Francisco Raimundo Ewerton Quadros. It should be remembered that in the same year, Elias da Silva organized a fraternal meeting of Spiritist leaders due to the disagreements among the members of Spiritist institutions in the capital at that time – the
Grupo dos Humildes, the
Sociedade Acadêmica Deus, Cristo e Caridade, the
Centro da União Espírita do Brasil, and the
Grupo Espírita Fraternidade. With these factors combined, the Brazilian Spiritist Federation was founded on January 1, 1884, in a meeting organized by Elias da Silva. In addition to Augusto Elias da Silva, Francisco Raimundo Ewerton Quadros,
Manoel Fernandes Filgueiras,
João Francisco da Silveira Pinto,
Maria Balbina da Conceição Batista,
Matilde Elias da Silva,
Luis Móllica,
Elvira P. Móllica,
José Agostinho Marques Porto,
Francisco Antônio Xavier Pinheiro,
Manoel Estêvão de Amorim, and
Quádrio Léo were present. On the following day (January 2), its first board of directors was elected and inaugurated, consisting of Major Ewerton Quadros as president, Fernandes Filgueiras as vice-president, Silveira Pinto as secretary, Elias da Silva as treasurer, and Xavier Pinheiro as archivist. The institution was initially headquartered in Elias da Silva's own residence, a house on Rua da Carioca, 120.
First decades , in
Rio de Janeiro. In its founding year, the Brazilian Spiritist Federation soon began charitable social work. However, in its early years, the FEB also faced various difficulties, both administrative and financial, as well as ideological issues internally, and the political and social upheavals of the country's capital externally. As an example of the former, there was a division within the movement between the so-called "secular" or "scientific" faction, led by Professor
Afonso Angeli Torteroli, and the "religious" or "mystical" faction, led by Dr. Bezerra de Menezes. In 1936, the Department of Esperanto was established at the FEB. On the eve of the establishment of the
Estado Novo (New State) in 1937, on October 27, the FEB's premises were closed by the police, but three days later, they were reopened by the order of Dr.
Macedo Soares, who was then the Minister of Justice. The period was also marked by the lawsuit initiated in 1944 by the widow of writer
Humberto de Campos against the FEB and Francisco Cândido Xavier, seeking the alleged copyright over the psychographed messages attributed to her deceased husband. Since then, the entity began using the pseudonym "
Irmão X" (Brother X). After the end of World War II, the institution brought to light the first edition of ''
The Spirits' Book'' in Esperanto (1946). Two years later, on September 9, 1948, the FEB inaugurated its "Publishing and Graphics Department". The event that marked the end of the 1940s was the signing, on October 5, 1949, of the so-called "
Golden Pact", considered the most important document of Spiritism in the country as it represented the unification of the Spiritist movement at the national level through the coordination of the FEB. As a result of the document's signing, on January 2, 1950, the
Federative Council of the FEB (CFN) was established in Rio de Janeiro, bringing together the representatives of the signing State Spiritist Federations. As a result of this effort, the "
Caravan of Fraternity" was sent to the Northeast Region of Brazil, composed of, among others,
Artur Lins de Vasconcelos Lopes,
Carlos Jordão da Silva, and
Leopoldo Machado. This initiative led to an increase in the number of adhering state federations.
Second half of the 20th century Finally, in 1960, in the context of the transfer of the capital of the country from Rio de Janeiro to
Brasília, the then President of the Republic,
Juscelino Kubitschek, declared the FEB a Public Utility Entity. In 1967, the institution inaugurated its Brasília Section in the
Federal District (October 3). A decade later (1977), the FEB established the Campaign for the Evangelization of Childhood and Youth and published "Adaptation of Spiritist Centers for Better Service to their Purposes". This work was followed in 1980 by "Guidelines for Spiritist Centers". In 1984, the FEB established the campaign for the
Systematic Study of Spiritist Doctrine (ESDE), released the "Manual of Administration of Spiritist Centers," and relocated its headquarters to Brasília in its own building. In 1990, the campaigns "In Defense of Life" and "Living in Family" were launched, along with the publications "Spiritist Social Communication" and "Spiritist Assistance and Promotion". In 1996, the FEB launched its website in four languages: Portuguese, English, French, and Spanish. ==List of presidents==