A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.