A self-styled visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting 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 claimed the substance on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds and hoaxes.
“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, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed 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 a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
