A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence 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 declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
