A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
