A self-styled mystic who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought many of people monthly to a lakeside town, 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 scam collected a large sum in offerings from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign on scams 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, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to combat the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
