A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations 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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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 appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
