A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling 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 sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
