A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of disasters to attract contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scheme generated a large sum in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was concocting 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 detective claimed the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that alleged visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff authorized a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
