A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
