A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
