A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Details
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 apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, 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 initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing 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 action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
