A self-styled mystic who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports 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 said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree 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 sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
