A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” said her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
