A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
