A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue 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.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French 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 guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree 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 spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
