A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
