A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
