A so-called visionary who drew hundreds 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 alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came 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 crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“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.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
