A so-called mystic who drew hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a statue of the Virgin Mary wept tears of blood has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Accusations and Details
The accused woman, who also claimed 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 fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue predictions of catastrophes to solicit contributions from their Catholic supporters.
Cardia drew many of individuals monthly to a lakeside town, a scenic town near Rome, to pray before the figure, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over a number of years, the alleged scam generated €365,000 in offerings from the pilgrims, who believed their money would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Further Claims
Cardia is also accused of issuing untrue prophecies, including claiming the figure alerted her that the evil was concocting disasters, for example an tremor that would destroy Rome and the takeover of the Catholic church by political ideology.
Prosecutors in the coastal city of Civitavecchia opened an investigation in 2023 after a detective asserted the substance on the figure originated from a pig. Cardia was later declared a deceiver by the Catholic church, which subsequently strengthened its rules on supernatural occurrences as part of a crackdown on scams 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,” said Cardia’s lawyer, the attorney.
Background and Related Events
Cardia, who has a prior conviction for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a Catholic pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
News of the trial came as the Vatican’s religious authority stated that supposed visions of Jesus in the European town of Dozulé in the 1970s were not of supernatural origin. Jesus was alleged to have shown himself to a woman 49 times requesting that a “glorious cross” that would ensure the cleansing of sin be constructed in the town. The authority said that the alleged visions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
The pontiff authorized a decree 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 action was aimed to counter the spread of an extreme worship of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged claims of apparitions, weeping figures, and so-called seers.
The late Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “do not always occur”.
