A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff 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 redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
