Regina Lucia Silveira Martins (photo), from Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, graduated in Education with a Masters and a PhD. She is an active member of the Spiritist Movement, working as a volunteer at the Regeneração (Regeneration) Spiritist Group, which was founded in 1891 by the great Spiritist pioneer, Dr Bezerra de Menezes. We spoke to her about her father, the Spiritist psychiatrist Dr Roberto Silveira.

Help our readers understand who your father was and his role in the Spiritist Movement.

When I talk about my father, I feel enormous gratitude for the opportunity I’ve had of sharing my life with such a good man. As he was my father, he influenced my formation and his life examples have had a daily impact on me, encouraging me to try to become a better person. Dr Roberto Silveira was a Spiritist psychiatric doctor, better known in the Spiritist Movement for the radio programme he hosted, “The Agenda of a Spiritist Psychiatrist.” He was a disciple of Dr Bezerra de Benezes and referred to him as “my boss” when he took part in the activities of the Regeneration Spiritist Group.

My father passed away at the age of 90 on September 7^th, 2019, the day we celebrate Brazilian Independence Day. His first contact with Spiritism came when he witnessed a genuine mediumship phenomenon at an African Brazilian (Umbanda) centre in Rio in 1970. He had been invited there by a nurse at the Bonsucesso hospital, where he was the director. He was an agnostic until that day, when he began researching Spiritism and eventually joined the Regeneration Spiritist Group.

From that time until he passed away in 2019, he helped hundreds of people at the Regeneration Centre free of charge, seeing them as a Spiritist doctor. He used to say that the healing process relied on several factors: the psychotherapy session, the healing session, the healing water provided during the sessions, the consistent presence of patients at the public meetings and the work on their behalf during the mediumship meetings.

How many books did he publish and which one has made a bigger impact on you?

During more than 40 years, he worked as a psychiatrist at the Regeneration Spiritist Group, publishing 12 books. He wrote extensively about the links between psychiatric illnesses and the lack of philosophical knowledge about the true meaning of life. In his last book, O ‘Meu’ consultório Espírita – as orientações de Chico Xavier (My Spiritist Practice, the guidance from Chico Xavier), he regretted the insistence of most people in denying reincarnation as a key factor behind many psychiatric illnesses, which for them remain unexplained. That book has made the biggest impact on me. Firstly, because it states clearly that a Spiritist practice is different from a conventional one, where the psychiatrist is normally advised to remain neutral and not to get emotionally involved with the patient. In a Spiritist practice, from the first contact the doctor is seen as a friend, a spiritual companion and that encourages the establishment of closer ties between them. That book has also marked me also because it contains messages dictated to the great medium, Chico Xavier, for my father. Those are messages from the Spiritual Benefactors, including Dr Bezerra de Menezes, addressing his work as a psychiatrist at the Regeneration Spiritist Centre. Some of them reveal that Dr Bezerra was indeed my father’s spiritual guide.

What is the most important part of your father’s legacy?

I followed with a great degree of admiration his journey as a doctor, as a provider, a family man and a Spiritist. I grew up seeing my father always around, providing for us, a true hero! As a doctor, he was the head of a big state hospital in Bonsucesso, Rio. He was the owner of a private lab and one of the directors of Flamengo, one of the country’s biggest football clubs. But before becoming a Spiritist, he had reservations about religion. My mother was a practicing Catholic and demanded that we attend mass every Sunday. I remember, however, that my father always found a way of walking away during the priest’s homily.

And what is his main legacy as a Spiritist?

We noticed a radical change in my father’s behaviour and priorities in the early 1970s. Before that, he took part in medical conferences, organised and directed many events and travelled with the football club, Flamengo. He then gave up most of that. He was no longer interested in taking part in medical conferences and he left the club’s board, remaining only as a passionate supporter. He was motivated by something else. A new motivation. We began to see him around with books about Spiritism and Philosophy. The chats and discussions he had with Spiritist friends eventually extended to our home and the whole family began attending the activities at the Regeneration Centre.

He was a renowned cytologist, he had an important job in Brazil’s public health system as a hospital director and he had his own Cytopathology Laboratory. After becoming a Spiritist, he decided to do a specialisation in Psychiatry at the prestigious Dr Eiras Clinic and concluded the course in 1978. He then began spending most of his time there, seeing patients from the Regeneration Centre who needed treatment.

We, his children, have been left with the memories of his amazing journey, his decision to serve and the opportunities that he sought when he joined Spiritism, taking an important step towards his encounter with Christ. I am immensely grateful to God for the opportunity that I’ve had to share my life with a father who was also a friend and who dedicated his life to charity and good deeds. His life lessons prompt us to make a concerted effort, always, to work to work on the flaws that we have, generated by past experiences, from this and previous lives.