A self-styled mystic who drew many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges 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 next year.
They are charged with staging false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false forecasts of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue predictions, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on supernatural occurrences 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, the attorney.
Background and Connected Events
Cardia, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
