A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds and deceptions.
“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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
