A so-called visionary who drew many of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover 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 statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and deceptions.
“Despite the irony, she finds comfort, viewing this as a chance to clarify the facts openly and conclusively stop all rumors, confusion, and disputes,” said her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
