A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with orchestrating false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scam collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the French 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 “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and so-called prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
