A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
