A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
