A self-styled visionary who attracted hundreds of devotees to a community near Rome by claiming that a figure of the Virgin Mary shed bloody tears has been ordered to stand trial for suspected fraud.
Central Charges and Details
The accused woman, who also stated the statue was transmitting messages to her, will be prosecuted together with her husband, Gianni Cardia, in April the coming year.
They are charged with staging fake apparitions of the Virgin Mary and making untrue forecasts of catastrophes to attract donations from their religious supporters.
Cardia drew hundreds of individuals each month to Trevignano Romano, a scenic town near Rome, to worship before the statue, which had been positioned in a temporary sanctuary on a hill. Over several years, the alleged scam collected €365,000 in donations from the visitors, who trusted their funds would go towards setting up a centre for ill children.
Additional Allegations
Cardia is also accused of making untrue predictions, including stating the statue warned her that the evil was planning calamities, for example an tremor that would destroy 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 private investigator asserted the blood on the figure came from a pig. Cardia was later labeled a deceiver by the Catholic church, which afterward strengthened its rules on paranormal 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 her legal representative, the attorney.
Context and Connected Incidents
The accused, who has a prior sentence for financial crime, purchased the figure in 2016 at a religious pilgrimage site in Međugorje.
Reports of the trial came as the Vatican’s doctrinal office declared that alleged visions 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 ensure the cleansing of sin be built in the town. The office announced that the claimed apparitions were “finally judged to be non-miraculous”.
Pope Leo authorized a ruling last week directing Catholics not to call Mary as the “joint savior”, that is to say that she assisted her son Jesus redeem the world from sin. His intervention was intended to combat the proliferation of an exaggerated veneration of the Madonna, often on online platforms, that has encouraged assertions of visions, crying figures, and self-styled prophets.
The former Pope Francis cautioned in 2023 that apparitions of Mary “are not always real”.
