A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
