A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract contributions from their religious supporters.
Cardia brought hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
