A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
