A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring next year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to attract contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia brought hundreds of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown 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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Connected Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports 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 deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
