A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
