A so-called visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a town near Rome by asserting that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for alleged fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed the figure was sending communications to her, will be tried along with her spouse, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are accused of staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making false forecasts of disasters to solicit donations from their Catholic followers.
Cardia drew hundreds of people monthly to a lakeside town, a lakeside town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been placed in a temporary sanctuary on a elevation. Over several years, the supposed scheme generated €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who believed their funds would go towards establishing a facility for sick children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also charged with making false prophecies, including claiming the statue alerted her that the evil was planning disasters, for example an tremor that would devastate Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Legal authorities in the coastal city of Civitavecchia initiated an investigation in 2023 after a detective claimed the substance on the figure came from a animal. Cardia was later labeled a fraud by the Catholic church, which subsequently tightened its rules on paranormal phenomena as part of a crackdown on frauds and deceptions.
“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.
Background and Related Incidents
Cardia, who has a previous conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic holy place in Međugorje.
News of the case came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that alleged apparitions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was said to have shown himself to a woman 49 times asking that a “magnificent crucifix” that would guarantee the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The authority announced that the claimed visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff approved a decree last week instructing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she helped her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was aimed to combat the spread of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on social media, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and self-styled seers.
The former pope warned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
