A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme collected €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened 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 occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Events
The accused, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
