A so-called visionary who attracted many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree 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 intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
