Weekly Report - 2 November 2004

Session became séance in the lower chamber of Brazil's congress on 28 October, when congressman Luiz Carlos Bassuma of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) took the floor to deliver a speech commemorating the 200th birthday of the Frenchman Allan Kardec, founding father of spiritualism (a set of beliefs that has about 2.3m followers in the country). Halfway into his address, Bassuma suffered a transformation visible to all who had been following the proceedings on live television. As the timbre of his voice changed and his gestures became unfamiliar, Bassuma departed from his text and delivered a prayer - inspired, as he would later say, 'by a spirit I had incorporated'.

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