A so-called mystic who drew many 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 alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning calamities, 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 initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the figure originated 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 crackdown on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared 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 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 alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
