A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of people monthly 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 a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree 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 intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
