A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds 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 fraud.
Key Accusations and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
