A self-styled visionary who drew many of pilgrims to a town near Rome by asserting that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been sent to trial for alleged fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the statue was transmitting communications to her, will be prosecuted together with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in the spring the coming year.
They are charged with staging false apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary shrine on a hill. Over a number of years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the pilgrims, who trusted their funds would go towards establishing a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the port city of Civitavecchia initiated an inquiry in 2023 after a detective claimed the blood on the statue originated from a animal. Cardia was later declared a fraud by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds 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 Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, bought the figure in 2016 at a religious holy place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were deemed non-miraculous. Jesus was said to have appeared 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 apparitions were “considered, definitively, as not supernatural in origin”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week directing Catholics not to refer to Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His intervention was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “do not always occur”.
