A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
