A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month 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 generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case 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 said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
