A so-called mystic who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
