A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News 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 Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed 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 refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
