A self-styled mystic who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds 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 devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
