A self-styled visionary who attracted many of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed tears of blood has been sent to trial for alleged deception.
Key Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was sending messages to her, will be tried along with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake visions of the Virgin Mary and issuing false predictions of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the figure, which had been positioned in a makeshift shrine on a hill. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated a large sum in offerings from the pilgrims, who trusted their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue prophecies, including claiming the statue warned her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an earthquake that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by communism.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a private investigator claimed the blood on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward tightened its rules on paranormal occurrences as part of a crackdown on frauds 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,” stated Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Context and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, bought the statue in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority declared that supposed apparitions of Jesus in the European 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 ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office said that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo approved a ruling last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “co-redeemer”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from damnation. His action was aimed to counter the proliferation of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has emboldened claims of apparitions, crying figures, and so-called seers.
The late pope cautioned in 2023 that appearances of Mary “are not always real”.
