A self-styled visionary who drew hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Particulars
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of orchestrating fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia brought many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards setting up a facility for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia opened an inquiry 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 paranormal occurrences as part of a campaign on frauds 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,” stated her legal representative, the attorney.
Background and Related Incidents
The accused, who has a previous conviction for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the statue in 2016 at a religious holy place in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus save the world from sin. His action was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of visions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The former Pope Francis warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
