A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case 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 shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
