A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of visions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
