A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure 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 claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown 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,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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 said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
