A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy 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 statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
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 ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
