Spiritism faded in France within a generation of Kardec's death in 1869, and grew instead in Brazil, where it is now a substantial religion.
It arrived with the French-reading professional classes in the 1860s, and the Brazilian Spiritist Federation was founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1884. Two features fitted local conditions. The first was charity: from early on Spiritist centres ran free clinics, orphanages, schools and psychiatric hospitals, which gave the movement real social weight in a country with thin public provision. The second was familiarity: mediumship and contact with the dead were already established in Afro-Brazilian religion, although Spiritists have generally kept a firm and sometimes uncomfortable distance from Umbanda and Candomble.
The decisive figure was Chico Xavier, Francisco Candido Xavier (1910-2002), a barely schooled man from Minas Gerais who published more than four hundred books said to be dictated by spirits, including poetry attributed to dead Brazilian writers and consoling letters written to bereaved parents in the handwriting of their children. He assigned the royalties to charity and lived in poverty. He became a national figure, appeared on television, and in a 2012 television poll was voted the greatest Brazilian of all time, a result driven in part by organised campaigning among Spiritist centres.
The 2010 national census recorded 3.8 million Brazilians identifying as Spiritist, about two per cent of the population and an increase of sixty-five per cent over 2000, making it the third largest religious identification in the country. Spiritists are on average markedly wealthier and better educated than the national mean. The movement's own estimates of those who attend centres or read the books without declaring the identity run far higher and cannot be verified.