A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was sending messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are accused of staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their religious followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over a number of years, the alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the blood on the figure originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to Madeleine Aumont 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, weeping statues, and self-styled prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
