A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false predictions, including stating the statue 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 port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences 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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial 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 said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
