A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake visions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of issuing false predictions, including claiming the figure alerted her that the devil was concocting calamities, for example an earthquake that would destroy Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator asserted the substance on the statue came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams and hoaxes.
“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,” stated her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, bought the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to a woman 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The office said that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened assertions of apparitions, crying figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
