A so-called visionary who drew hundreds of pilgrims to a community near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was transmitting communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue forecasts of disasters to attract donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a elevation. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who trusted their money would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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 Events
The accused, who has a prior conviction for bankruptcy fraud, bought the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that alleged visions of Jesus in the European 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 “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the purification of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a decree last week instructing 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 action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
