A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including stating the figure 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.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural phenomena as part of a campaign 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of visions, crying statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope warned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
