A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, 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 declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
