A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, 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.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved 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 intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
