A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was sending messages to her, will be tried together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making false predictions of disasters to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to a lakeside town, 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 alleged scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the statue came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus save the world from damnation. His intervention was intended to counter the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
