A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations 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 the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the figure alerted 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 port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial 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 said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
