A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood 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 prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams and hoaxes.
“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.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
