A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating false visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and hoaxes.
“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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to a woman 49 times asking that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be constructed in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing 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 action was intended to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called seers.
The former pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
