The lawyer and professor of sociology Lauro Michielin was born in 1920. He came from a Catholic family and, during his adolescence, attended a boarding school run by priests in Campinas, in the state of São Paulo. However, he eventually became an atheist, as he could not believe in the religious dogmas that had been imposed upon him and with which he disagreed, considering them absurd and irrational. Thus, until he encountered Spiritism, Lauro Michielin declared himself an atheist, as he could not accept a faith that was not founded on reason.

It was at the Faculty of Law of Largo de São Francisco that he first came into contact with the phenomena and manifestations of spiritual life. In the boarding house where he lived, after switching off the light in his room to go to sleep, he heard several knocking sounds coming from the furniture and began to wonder where they were coming from. He switched the light back on, and the knocking stopped. Could it have been mice? After checking, he found nothing. He turned the light off again, and the same knocking resumed. It then occurred to him that it might be a spirit. A loud knock immediately afterwards seemed to confirm his hypothesis, as though someone were reading his thoughts. He then thought: “If you are a friendly spirit, give one knock; if you are a hostile spirit, give two.” A single knock answered his question in an encouraging manner. From that moment on, he continued this investigative dialogue, although in a very limited way, asking questions that could only be answered with yes (one knock) or no (two knocks).

Lauro Michielin was the creator of the architectural design and the first president of the Antonio Luiz Sayão Spiritist Sanatorium, a hospital with more than 700 beds which, when inaugurated, became one of the ten largest hospitals in Brazil. Today it is known as Clínica Sayão. To understand the magnitude of the challenge faced by this group of courageous idealists, it is necessary to remember that, during the 1950s, it took great courage to defend Spiritism and its ideals—regarded by many as “the work of the devil”. This stance led to Lauro Michielin’s public excommunication, pronounced during a ceremony conducted by the canon of the Parish Church of Araras, who argued that these campaigns were diverting valuable and much-needed resources that ought to have been directed to the Catholic Church.

Many years later, the same canon, by then elderly and almost blind, attended Lauro Michielin’s funeral, accompanied by the priest who had succeeded him. Humbly, he asked permission from his widow, Aparecida Crepscki Michielin, and administered the Anointing of the Sick. Lauro Michielin was also a member of the team responsible for creating the Anuário Espírita (Spiritist Yearbook), one of the most respected publications dedicated to the dissemination of Spiritism. The Anuário Espírita became the starting point for the creation of the IDE (Instituto de Difusão Espírita de Araras – Spiritist Dissemination Institute of Araras), which celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2013 and remains dedicated to publishing and distributing Spiritist works throughout Brazil and in many other countries around the world.

He left behind a valuable bibliographical legacy, among whose principal works are Beyond the Frontiers of the World (Além das Fronteiras do Mundo), Towards Infinity (Rumo ao Infinito), Palestine in the Time of Jesus (Palestina no Tempo de Jesus), among others. These publications were issued with the aim of raising funds for the construction of the Antonio Luiz Sayão Sanatorium. Lauro Michielin died as the result of a road traffic accident on 24 June 1976.