A self-styled mystic who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams 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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions 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 asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
