A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged deception.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic 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 generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“As paradoxical as it may seem, she actually feels relief, believing this is an opportunity to reveal the truth of the events with transparency and to definitively put an end to all forms of speculation, misunderstanding and controversy,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
