A self-styled mystic who attracted hundreds of pilgrims to a town near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the figure was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April next year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and issuing untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew many of people monthly to Trevignano Romano, a lakeside town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme collected a large sum in donations from the visitors, who believed their money would go towards setting up a facility for sick children.
Additional Claims
Cardia is also charged with issuing false predictions, including claiming the statue warned her that the devil was planning calamities, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the seizure of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a campaign on scams and deceptions.
“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 her legal representative, Solange Marchingoli.
Context and Related Events
The accused, who has a prior sentence for bankruptcy fraud, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the French town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have appeared to Madeleine Aumont 49 times requesting that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the purification of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the alleged visions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to counter the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, weeping statues, and so-called prophets.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
