A so-called mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including stating the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on supernatural 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a previous sentence for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure 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 ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
