A so-called visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue came 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 campaign 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the claimed visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to combat the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
