A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly 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 scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, 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 initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions 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 “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions 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 spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
