A self-styled visionary who attracted many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Key Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of disasters to attract donations from their religious followers.
Cardia brought many of individuals each month to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 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 making false predictions, including stating the statue alerted her that the evil was concocting calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its regulations on supernatural occurrences as part of a campaign 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 Events
The accused, who has a previous sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed visions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office said that the alleged apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, 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 worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping statues, and self-styled seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
