A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
