A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
