Luciana Terezinha Novinski (photo)comes from a Polish Catholic family in the town of Dom Feliciano, in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. After facing years of family objection to Spiritism, she finally became a Spiritist in 2016. She is a volunteer worker at Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz Spiritist Centre. She has a degree in Education and works as an event organiser.

In this interview, she speaks about the legacy of the great medium and writer Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz, who played an important role in the town’s history and touched the lives of so many people.

Tell us a bit more about your hometown.

Dom Feliciano is small town in the state of Rio Grande do Sul with an estimated population, in 2013, of 15,103 inhabitants. About 85% of its population is of Polish origin. In total, 75% of the people in the town live in rural areas of the municipality. The economy is based on the production of tobacco, grapes, peppers, strawberries and milk.

Who was Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz?  

Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz was born as Fratisek Vladimir Lorenc in the province of Zhor, in Zbislav, current district of Písek, in the Czech Republic on 24 December, 1872. He was a prodigy and was able to read from the age of 5. When was 17, he was already a teacher and could speak fluently English, French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Chinese and Aramaic, which was Jesus’s native tongue. At the age of 18, in 1890, he published the first Esperanto Manual for Czechs. He was an enthusiast of Esperanto and was one of the founders of the Universal Esperanto Society in Geneva, Switzerland. He was an intellectual, a teacher, a philosopher, a homeopathic doctor and a writer, with 73 books published. He was also a translator, an astronomer, an astrologist, a linguist who knew more than a hundred languages, including Esperanto, a philanthropist, a farmer, a poet and the father of many children, as well as a renowned medium who dedicated his life to helping other people.

How did you become interested in his life?

One day in school, when I was still a teenager, one of the teachers spoke about his life and I was amazed. I began to research about him. My interest grew when I realised that the town’s library was named after him. I searched for books about him, but I couldn’t find much. I then began talking to older people who could all remember acts of kindness from him. In 2009, I became director of the town’s Culture Department, which managed the local museum and the library. I envisaged there an opportunity to find out more about him. As director, I had the great pleasure of eventually meeting his grandchildren. Some of them, Lorenz, Sinval, Vladimir, Sandra, Tales and Jandira, became friends.

What was the main aspect of Lorenz’s personality?

It is very difficult to pick one of his many qualities. But I believe that his strongest trait was his generosity. He had a big heart and couldn’t say no to anyone. There were days when he didn’t have time to sleep, as he went to work in the fields in the morning and then taught in the afternoon and the evening. As he was the only doctor in the community, he would spend some nights by the bed of patients. He was also the father of 13 children, 8 adoptive children and he looked after 30 others who lodged at his house temporarily to work or study, as they lived far away. Despite all that, he still found time to share his knowledge through his books. He published more than 70 books during his lifetime and some of them in Esperanto.

What was his connection with mediumship?

To understand it, we need to go back to what is now the Czech Republic, where he was born. His parents were Catholic and his mother knew he was bright and wanted him to become a priest. He had no inclinations towards Spiritism. But one day he reluctantly agreed to take part in a mediumship session, after a friend insisted with him. He was totally sceptical and couldn’t imagine that he would become the main focus of the meeting. One the Spirits revealed to the group that Lorenz would travel overseas, would become a great medium and would work hard for the development of Spiritism abroad. And that’s exactly what happened. He started to have premonitions during his trip to Brazil and when he arrived here his mediumship flourished.

Tell us about the healing sessions he took part as a medium.

He took part in healing sessions in which two people who were disabled were able to walk again. One of them was a local shopkeeper and the other one was a shopkeeper from the neighbouring town of Tapes. This man was severely disabled and after the healing session he was able to lead a normal life. Also in 1918, when the world was hit by the Spanish Flu, Lorenz developed like a vaccine which protected the whole population of Dom Feliciano.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I would only like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the opportunity to share the life and work of Francisoco Valdomiro Lorenz, a Spirit of Light who came to this world to help other people without any form of discrimination of constraint. And he chose the town of Dom Feliciano, in Rio Grande do Sul, as his home.

Editor’s Note:

Documents, videos and other files about the life and work of Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz are available on “Blog da Lú” and on Luciana Novinski’s YouTube channel. To access the blog, please click here