A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions 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 asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification 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 decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
