A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions 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 damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
